this is where the world ends
by fiesa
Summary: Chances, choices, loves. Olivia, Peter. One Shot Collection, post-eps for Season 5. Complete.
1. Distance

**this is where the world ends**

_Summary: 3 months and 20 years – give or take. It ends here. _

_Warning: -_

_Disclaimer: No copyrightin__**Fringe**__ment intended._

_A/N: Seeing this is the last season of Fringe, it seems fitting that I write something for one of my most favorite fandoms again. I am planning a series of post-episode fics for each episode because I am selfish like that. Let's see where it takes me. _

* * *

_Episode 1 – Transcilient Thought Unifier Model-11_

**distance**

"Hey."

"Hey."

She is sitting at the table when Peter enters the living room. Olivia is wrapping both her hands around a cup of what goes as coffee in this world – a gesture so intimately familiar to him he feels a pang of hurt in his chest. It has been months since he saw her like this. _Years,_ his brain corrects. But it feels like months. Maybe it was only days since he last saw her. Her smile is still the same.

"Have you seen Walter?"

Immediately, he wants to smack himself for not asking how she is. He heard her turning and tossing again that night, her restlessness adding to his own. He cannot remember when he fell asleep last night but he doesn't feel like he slept a lot. Judging after the rings underneath her eyes, she hasn't, either.

"He's outside."

She points to the window with one hand. Through the grey-and-white curtains, Peter can see a familiar figure in an abandoned car without a door. Walter is only wearing the same T-shirt he wore when they got him out of the Observer's HQ, a pair of boxers and an old bathrobe. Blood stains the shirt, ugly and red. But he seems calmer somehow, his head bobbing in an unheard rhythm.

"I hope he doesn't get arrested for indecent behavior," Peter jokes lamely and pours himself a cup of coffee as well. He remains standing, though.

Olivia looks up at him with her grey-and-blue eyes. Her golden hair falls over her shoulders loosely. Abruptly, Peter is thrown into a memory.

* * *

_She is sitting at the table in his and Walter's house, a cup of tea in both of her hands, and she is smiling at him from behind a curtain of hair. _

_"I don't care. Just order something."_

_"You hungry or very hungry?"_

_"Very hungry."_

_She smirks and looks down and he follows her gaze. She is in her seventh month and Peter still can't believe the miracle of it: she is having a baby. They are having a baby, really, and the thought seems so incredible he has to swallow past the lump in his throat. At the same time, fear jolts down his spine, a cold shiver that makes him set down his cup and kneel down in front of her. _

_"Peter?"_

_Olivia looks down at him, her brows creased in a frown. _

_"What's the matter?"_

_"Nothing will ever happen to her," he tells her. "I won't allow anything to hurt this baby, Livia."_

_Her hand caresses his hair, her other wrapping around his. _

_"I know."_

_When he looks at her, he sees the certainty in her eyes. It touches him – seeing how much she trusts him, how much she loves him. After all they have been through it still floors him that a woman like her could feel for him so deeply. That he ever could feel for someone else that much. _

_He'd say _I love you_ but the words are stuck in his throat. She seems to read them in his eyes, anyway, because she smiles the most beautiful smile he's ever seen. _

_"And now, could you please order dinner? I'm starving."_

* * *

In all the nights he has lived through since it happened – since the Observers took over and Etta disappeared – he has asked himself the same question. Could he have done anything? Could anything he had done bring her back? Had he reacted a second earlier, had he searched for her more stubbornly, had he waited longer. Would it have brought his daughter back? And whom has he failed more – Etta or Olivia?

Both, he guesses.

Olivia was strong, always had been. Of course, he knew it wasn't entirely the truth. Olivia was as strong as she was able to, stronger when she had people to depend on, weaker when she was hurt. Sometimes stronger when she was hurt and weaker when she loved someone. Peter had seen it all. He had fallen in love with a woman who was perfectly capable of standing on her own. He had resented her – she had seemed to strong after Etta's disappearance, so collected. So calm. He resented her for her strength to go on, to see the bigger picture. The world needed saving. Olivia had always been there for the world, even if her own life fell apart. Peter didn't care about the world in general as long as his own world was in one. Without Etta, nothing mattered anymore, not even what they had. So Olivia had left with Walter and Astrid, and Peter had stayed to continue his search for Etta.

And now they were here, three lost months and approximately 20 years later. He had watched Etta disappear and had lost Olivia and had ambered himself and there they were again, 2036, and he had aged three months since he had lost his daughter.

It felt like eternity.

"What are you thinking?"

Olivia's voice broke his train of thoughts. He looked back at her – her eyes, her hair, her face – and felt the unbearable urge to touch her. Kiss her. Feel her hair under his hands, the softness of her skin, the warmth of her lips. He stayed rooted to the spot.

"So much has changed," he offered her instead. The smile he received in return was both sweet and painful.

"Have we changed, too?"

He considered the thought. Had they? And had they changed because they had missed 20 years, or had they already begun changing before all of this had happened?

"I can't say."

Honesty was the best thing he could offer now. After all that had happened, he figured, he owed it to her.

"What do you think?"

"I think…" Her glance wandered off into the distance and remained there, something he had seen so often in earlier times that it made his heart ache again. She stared out of the window for quite some time. It had become lighter outside, but since the thick clouds covered the sky Peter was unable to tell whether the sun had risen entirely or not. This world seemed to be immersed into a never-ending half-light. "I think people change."

"Hmmm."

_Is that good or bad_, he wanted to ask her but kept silent. Olivia threw him a half-hearted smile and got up from the table.

"I'll go get Walter. Etta and Astrid will be up soon, we should start making some plans."

Setting her cup down in the sink, she came to stand so close to Peter that he could smell the faint scent of soap that clung to her. It was unfamiliar, like everything in this world. His and yet not his. Olivia and yet not Olivia. She was close – and yet he knew she was keeping a distance to him. He wasn't sure why she did it, only knew she had every right to. They hadn't parted on good terms. She had told him she understood, but that didn't mean she had forgotten. Why did their relationship seem to be built up on repetitions? Did they even still have a relationship? It hadn't mattered two days ago, when he had gotten her out of the Amber. Now… Now was different.

Olivia was watching him. Peter lowered his head, staring into his cup.

When she passed him on her way out of the kitchen – so close, so close – he had to lock his arms to his side in order to stop himself from touching her.


	2. And love

_Chapter 2 – Episode 2 In Absentia _

**and love**

_Summary:Like looking into a mirror. Etta doesn't like what she sees._

_Warning: -_

_Set: post-ep to Episode 2 of Season 5._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended._

_A/N: A quick update, since the third episode will be out in two days and the chapter for the last is still missing. Also, my chance to say thanks to the reviewers and followers - I haven't caught up on looking through the reviews yet but I will! Thanks a lot._

* * *

"Hey, Mum."

_Mum._

It is the only time Etta says the name out loud. For whatever reason, she just can't – she cannot call Olivia _Mum_, cannot give her the title she deserves. She looks at a woman with grey eyes and straight blond hair falling down to and over her shoulders. A lithe figure, strong and yet fragile. A face lined with effort and devotion. Etta she sees herself – in a strange, twisted way – and she isn't sure whether she wants to see what she sees or look away. _Prime example of conflicting interests, good grief_. Whole new definition. It is like raiding an abandoned house and finding a book one used to love as a child. It is familiar and well-loved and yet does not belong into this time anymore. One might sit and spend a few minutes reminiscencing but in the end one returns to the present and continues on, especially if there are Loyalists on the move. Only Etta didn't find an old book but her mother, the woman who gave life to her and had abandoned her; and instead of going back to normal her entire world has been upset.

_(No, she hasn't been abandoned, she's been lost, but it is difficult to _not _blame her parents for the life she has had.)_

Etta's not a good daughter. To say the truth, she hasn't missed her mother much for the past few years. Whether it was the fact that she has enough to do without thinking about her parents or that she has simply grown up without them she is unable to say. Not that it matters. Etta doesn't even know what her last name is – Dunham? Bishop? – so she goes with the one she's had since she has been adopted eighteen years ago. Easier that way. Less painful.

_Dad._

Dad is Peter, and Etta calls him Peter, too, it is easier as well but for different reasons. It is not as if she can remember him better than Olivia. There are bits and pieces of her childhood – when she was three she remembers a day at the grocery store when she was barely able to look over the edge of the huge shopping cart and watched her parents kiss and buy her sweets. She knows Peter was there, and Olivia, as well. But looking at Peter is like seeing the past while looking at Olivia is like looking into a mirror. The past is nicer than the truth, she figures, because Peter's face is full of love and wonder at his newly found daughter and full of old pain and memories of a child while Olivia sees her as who she really is: a twenty-three years-old, fully grown woman who has learned to live her own life.

It is worse, even.

Peter sees her as the daughter he lost, Olivia sees her as the daughter who found them.

Peter sees her as his little girl. Olivia sees her as a grown woman.

Peter sees her as a person who might be able to help them change the future. Olivia sees her as a person who holds the threads to the same change, but with the potential to blow up into their face.

Peter sees her as his daughter. Olivia looks at Etta and sees the person she is, and while all those things aren't negative from the beginning they have the power to hurt her. To change her.

_Mum._

Etta never had to work hard to please her parents since they were gone. Little did she care whether she pleased the people in the orphanage, and her foster parents didn't make it long in this society. Also, Etta was what once has been called a prodigy, so she didn't need to work hard in order to achieve the position she now has in Fringe Division. A brilliant mind, nimble hands, a brain able to calculate connections and equations faster than normal people. Well-versed in politics, athletic, intelligent, self-confident. Pretty, too, with her blonde hair and her grey eyes. Talented. Everything she touches turns out well. What else would she want? It never was important, never mattered who thought what about what she did. Agent Foster might have been an exception to the rule. He was her superior, but he also was a friend. Etta doesn't have many of them. The same factors that make her life effortless on some days are a minor hindrance on others. Emphasis being on _minor. _She doesn't really care about having friends. The one who lives with the least impact will live longest. She has grown and learned and has become who she is today. She has learned to fight, to defend, to run. To say the right things when confronted by an Observer. To hold still when they watch her, both in body and mind. To move with careful grace as to not be marked as suspicious. She has learned to fire a gun and to take a hit; she has learned to question suspects and to obey orders. But most importantly, Etta has learned about life. About life in her world, to be precise, and it is what makes her recoil when she looks at Olivia.

When she sees her mother's eyes alight with unsaid words and hidden thoughts.

Etta is used to being the whispering well of secrets but she gets the feeling she is a bloody amateur compared to Olivia Dunham. There are many things in the woman's eyes but she barely manages to decipher the uppermost layer. It is enough to make her avert her eyes in shame. A mirror, really, and, as always, reality can never keep up with the image of perfection on the other side of the polished glass.

_No pressure there. _

Olivia Dunham is a beautiful woman. Etta sees her and knows what her father saw in her. She is not pretty by general standards – her face is to angled, her features too hard – but the strength in her shoulders and the heart that seems to shine from her eyes are beautiful. Maybe that means her heart is beautiful and Etta's isn't. But then, unlike Etta, Olivia grew up in a world untainted by the Observers. Is it wrong that she begrudges her mother this? She knows nothing of her, not really, only knows she was part of the original Fringe Team and a legend in her own rights. She cannot imagine the life her mother must have had. Protected, surely, loving parents and happy childhood times and good friends. Etta cannot imagine her mother ever had to fight like she had since early childhood. Etta cannot imagine Olivia ever had worries worse than what to wear and whom to meet prior to her adulthood. Parents are supposed to protect their children from things like that, Etta's parents failed here. It has only been days since she learned she has been lost and has been missed dearly but in her eyes the circumstances poorly excuse the final outcome. She knows she shouldn't blame her parents, but a thin needle of spite remains. If that means she is a bad person so be it but she does her work and protects her world and if she has to fight dirty in order to do so so be it, once again.

If everybody fights like that, it is not unfair.

And, anyway, in a place like this world she has to use the same methods the enemy uses. Fight fire with fire, bomb the bombers. There is no other way, she tried. In the beginning there was patience, and reason, and compassion. Then, the enemy started using anger to fuel men, pain to distort reason and hate to fill the blanks and all those methods demanded equal payback. Does it matter whether ten Loyalists die or fifteen? Twenty Rebels have died the day before. In retribution, the Observers send more Loyalist. Again, Rebels die. It is a vicious circle of repetition, again and again, there is no ending to the cycle of hatred. Etta has been caught in the ongoing war for so long she cannot even remember the first time the Rebels used the time-accelerating devices for torture but she knows it was picked up in retaliation to the murder of eight Rebels by Loyalists.

Two sides, one war. One world. Only they already lost, both war and world. Etta only fights on because she is utterly stubborn. Hope died at the age of three.

Or maybe it was ambered along with three Fringe agents and one mad scientist?

_Mum._

Etta cannot look at her. Not when she sits at the breakfast table and smiles up from her cup, not when she stands behind Peter and follows her words. Not when she looks at her from the door, Etta and the Loyalist being the only people in the small office. Not when everything she thinks is hidden in her eyes, everything Etta wishes for is written somewhere in the depths of the face in front of her. Not when the emotions that carefully show in the features of her mirror image threaten to spill over but no word is said.

Olivia looks at Etta as if she grieves for her. There is no disappointment to be found in her eyes, no reproof, not even anger. The woman who is her mother has warm eyes, despite their cool color, and everything in Etta cries out. She wants to throw herself at her, wants to feel strong arms around her. Wants to cry – because she lost her innocence, lost her childhood. Because she lost her parents. Olivia only has pity in her eyes when she looks at her daughter, and for some reason this hurts so much more than open defiance would hurt. It would be easier, too, if Olivia had challenged Etta's authority. If she had tried to insert herself into the missions more often, if she would try to influence her decisions, counter her lines of reasoning. But despite everything Etta feels her mother wants to be – in control, in the field, in the middle of an argument with her daughter about why she acts the way she does – Olivia doesn't make a move to get those things. It impresses her. She doesn't think she'd have the strength to step back like this.

All of the best and so little of herself. She'll be developing an allergy towards mirrors.

Etta never thought of herself as soft. But Olivia is true – she is hardened by her fate, hardened by what has happened to her world and is still happening. Nobody has ever told her she doesn't need to be like that. She's always thought she'd rather break before she turned soft, she'd rather die than allow an enemy to see a weakness in her. The fact that compassion can be a weapon has never occurred to her. But then, Olivia doesn't see it as a weapon, not really and not if she is starting to see her mother as the one she really is. And Etta isn't sure whether she is able to understand her, whether she will ever look at her and see her mother and no one else. There is pity, clear in her eyes. And for her own daughter, no less. And grief, a sadness so fathomless deep she doesn't even want to think about it. It's hard to wrap her mind around the fact that she isn't the only one who has been suffering all those years. It's also incredibly disturbing to see herself from her mother's point of view. She doesn't think she likes what she sees.

…

_You did the right thing._

Etta hasn't known her own mother for long – not for more than a few days – but she is starting to get the knack of it. Maybe it is because Olivia's face is so similar to hers, so like the face she sees whenever she looks into a mirror. Etta also suspects her similarity with her mother is one of the reasons why Peter seems to look at her so often, but then that is another story altogether.

Whatever the reason, she is pretty sure she sees approval in her mother's face when she turns the communicator from the fleeing Loyalist back to her own face.

And love.


	3. strength

_Chapter 3 – Episode 3 – The Recordist_

**strength**

_Summary: There are different types of it. Olivia knows them all._

_Warning: -_

_Set: post-ep to Episode 3 of Season 5._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended._

_A/N: Hehe^^ Thanks to amynoemi, zeusfluff and red lightning, who reviewed the first chapter – I'll definitely continue this as a collection of one shots and post-episode fics. Thanks for returning readers, reviewers and guests – and for the correction of my BE/AE mistake! I hope you'll all like the third chapter._

* * *

There are different types of strength.

Olivia knows them all. But then, that doesn't mean she _is_ strong herself.

Peter is strong. It's what she loves in him and fears at the same time, because it has the potential to hurt him so much. She sees him looking at Walter with this little smile of his, like he knows something his father doesn't, and knows it is what makes him _Peter. _And the way he looks at Etta, pride and love and worry right there for the world to see. And the way he talks to the boy River, joking and yet respectful. He isn't afraid to let the world see what he feels, to say what he thinks, and it is his inner strength that shines from his eyes when she looks at him that makes her ache to touch him.

Astrid is strong. The way she handles everything – being torn away from her family, having lost twenty years. Her optimism still is there, right in the face of a world dying of carbon dioxide and ruled by invaders. Her patience, too, both in the face of Walter's capriciousness and Peter's and her unspoken conflicts. Her smile is still sweet, despite everything.

Etta. Etta, too, is strong, a girl so young and yet old. She's brave and intelligent and everything Olivia would ever have wished for, had she thought of having a daughter. _You're so much more than I ever imagined_. Right back at you, Olivia thinks, because she never ever would have thought such a wonder might be possible. It surely isn't to her credit that this girl in front of her is so incredibly, wonderfully amazing.

_Second chances_, Peter told her and he looked like he believed in it.

He always did, always was the one of them who believed despite everything. His words brought everything right back: the hopelessness of the shelter, the cool plastic of the tables. Apple pie – he had been right, it was amazing, and Olivia felt even worse at the thought that she was enjoying a simple piece of pie when her daughter was missing. Peter kept on talking, his hands drawing useless maps, his jaw so determined, his eyes so _sure_ they would find her, the next place would be it, she would be right there. And Olivia didn't hear a word, just saw his lips move and his hands and the wall full of faces behind him. Etta was gone, but she never had been hers to begin with, hadn't she? For a person as messed up as Olivia was, something like the simple concept of happiness and motherhood didn't apply. Everything she touched was doomed right from the beginning. John died, Charlie died, Peter left – everyone left, even Etta was gone, and it would only be a short while before Olivia would fall apart, as well. She could feel herself breaking, hovering at the verge of the black abyss. Before he had even outlined his plan she had known this was it – she wouldn't follow him further, wouldn't continue his fruitless search. Peter might be able to go on like this. Peter was strong. Olivia wasn't. She was a coward. Already brittle and falling apart, she ran before she could lose even more. And Peter had seen it as strength. And Astrid and Walter had thought she had put the world above the search for her daughter. And her daughter had thought she had never given up – while, in reality, Olivia had only wanted to protect herself.

"Punish yourself, you mean," Ghost-Peter whispered in her mind.

But Etta's hand was warm around hers, reassuring and strong, and if she felt Olivia's hand tremble she didn't show any sign of noticing it. And Peter's gaze was full of trust and understanding, something she resented sometimes and craved, at the same time, and how on earth could it be that she felt so damn sad when she was with them but never wanted to leave them again?

Oh, and the sacrifices.

She had made them, Peter had made them and Walter had and even Etta. The little kid had. Everyone had. They were living in a world built on the sacrifices people made to keep others alive and how did they manage to continue on, she wondered, with the weight of all these sacrifices and expectations on their shoulders? _(And why did she care, why did she run and run and run and try to save everything and everyone?) _The grey skyline passed by as they moved past ruins and rubble and burnt dreams. In the back of the car Walter was humming a tune she didn't recognize, his ridiculous sunglasses slowly scooting down the bridge of his nose. Etta was asleep, her golden hair falling over her face. She looked so young, her features relaxed and bare of all wariness. Peter met Olivia's gaze in the rearview mirror, then turned to look at her directly. When he saw what she was looking at, he smiled. Something sparked in his dark eyes and Olivia felt her heart shift.

The car bumped and sighed down the street, dirty glass and dirty mirrors and broken windows. But it ran. A little bit like them, really, or rather, a little bit the way she felt: Broken and lost and old – and yet: functioning. Because it had to. Because she was needed.

The landscape passed. Three hours into their journey and Walter was asleep, as well.

Peter fumbled with the knobs of the radio. Olivia watched him, unsurprised when the only thing that sounded from the speakers was white noise. Looking up, Peter shrugged and gave her a crooked smile.

"Worth the try."

"I don't think there are radio stations left," she told him.

"Why not? Observers like control. What would be better than the media?"

"You've seen what happened to TV."

"Yuck."

The speakers crackled.

"Hey – hey! There was something! Turn it back, quick!"

She turned the knobs again and the static-y sound returned. Holding their breaths, they listened. Really – the faint melody was barely recognizable underneath the layers of static noise. And yet, it was there. Familiar. Fall-back-into-time-and-memories-familiar.

"Wow," Peter finally said. "Do you remember…"

He broke off suddenly, throwing her an awkward glance. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to…"

"No, it's fine."

Later, back in the dark silence of one of Fringe Division's safe apartments, Olivia sat on the sofa that had become her bed, her arms wrapped around her knees. She could hear Etta in the bathroom, Walter's soft snores from the next room. They'd needed the entire day to sneak around patrols and loyalists and customs until they reached their destination, had hidden for a few hours until her daughter deemed it safe for them. The places they had stayed in the last days were shadows of remembrance to her, curses she could never outrun: every memory clear in her head, sharp like photographs. And yet there had been so many of them, even before she had been freed from the amber. Every place was similar in its hopelessness and its aura of defeat. Every place seemed to respond to Peter's – and now to Etta's – calm reassurance. Every place made her think of things she didn't want to think of, feelings she wanted to leave buried, memories she did not want to have. It came back no matter how much she feared it.

Human beings were supposed to outgrow their fears.

Children feared darkness, but growing up they learned there was nothing to fear in it. Many more things were left behind along the sides of the path to adulthood. Sitting in the dark, small room, knowing Peter would sleep on the other side of it, Olivia knew she'd never outgrow the feeling of being left behind. Even in an apartment with three other people she felt isolated.

"Olivia?"

Peter had entered without her noticing. Olivia looked up. He was only wearing a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. His face was half shadow, half light – hard and incredibly soft at the same time. She looked at him, scrutinized him for a long, long time. As if he sensed she needed her time he just stood there, his head cocked to the side, his eyes patient. Their glances met. Olivia didn't look away this time, and neither did he. Weariness was plain in his face.

"What I said earlier, about second chances…" She didn't say anything, just looked at him. "I meant it."

"I know." _You can't even touch me,_ she thought desperately. "Peter…" Her words were a whisper. Olivia closed her eyes. Swallowed.

"I'm scared."

"I know."

Opening her eyes, she saw he had crouched down next to her makeshift bed. His eyes were directly in front of her, dark and open and full of everything that made him Peter. Made her love him so much she was afraid of it again. Acceptance was written in them clearly. And so much more. In those two words, he told her everything: that he knew she was fragile, that he saw she was on the verge of breaking. But also that he was there, and that he would hold her. If she let him. When he lifted his hand to touch her face she didn't move, let him caress her cheek, and then she leaned into his hand. It was just this – his hand on the side of her face, soft and warm and real, nothing more. Neither one of them moved. They were only just getting to know each other again, Olivia thought, strangely disconnected from her mind. They would need some more time to get to the point they had once been. Peter could barely touch her and she could barely look at him but they were beginning to get back to where they had once been before. Or to move forward, because going back never was the only alternative. Peter's hand was warm and trembled just a little bit. She was, too.

"I know you, Livia."

The way his tongue formed around her name was like a caress.


	4. hello and good bye

_Chapter 4 – Episode 4 The bullet that saved the world_

**hello and good bye**

_Summary: Wake up and face reality.  
_

_Warning: character death, but we all knew that. Don't read if you haven't watched the episode.  
_

_Set: post-ep to Episode 4 of Season 5._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended._

_A/N: I know about everyone who writes in this fandom will do something like this. Still, I want to do to returning visitors and new readers, too! Does anyone not wish the last episode never happened? Damn.  
_

* * *

Peter wakes up with a start.

The nightmare he had had him paralyzed from head to toe. His heart beats twice its normal rhythm, cold sweat coats his brow. It takes him fifteen seconds to even out his breath, to relax cramped muscles and to force himself to realize he's back to reality. Then he remembers Etta _is _dead.

It is not something a father should experience.

Every time he gets up, every time he sees something that reminds her of him. Many things, tiny things. Weird things. Normal things. People and houses and guns, faces and hands and cars. She is everywhere, anytime, as if she just left for a quick errand and was already returning, her steps familiar and strong on the stairs. Her scent lingers in the bathroom. Her shampoo is still there, or rather the soap she used, and her toothbrush, and the little knick knacks she left littered all over the rooms. In Peter's mind, two images of one girl mix, meld and separate again, blond hair and glowing eyes and a beaming smile, a small but steady hand, a confident expression, a shaking body against his chest. His little girl. Lost once, twice, and the second time is irreversible. And the worse, because of its finality. As long as she was gone, he could still find her someday. He did. She found him, she came back to him, years older and decades wiser and so incredibly beautiful, brave and strong. And she left him again, died in his arms, her last act an act of defiance that would lead to them continuing on, and for exact that reason, he refuses to do so.

_I do not care. _

A world without Etta doesn't matter anymore.

Which is why he does not think. Does not hesitate, even. There is no way to get her back, no way to make undone what has happened. No way to ever see her again, hear her voice again, watch her smile again. If there is no Etta, there is no Peter. No daughter, no father, no child, no parent, and if there is nothing that matters he does not care what happens next. Save the world? Go to hell. A world without Etta is no place he deems worth living in.

A world without Etta is no place he deems worth saving.

* * *

Astrid wakes up with tears in her eyes.

It takes her a few seconds to realize where she is, or, more importantly, _when_, and for another few seconds she tries to make out her surroundings by listening attentively. No sound of cars outside, no sirens, no Boston winds howling and rattling at the windows. Just the silence of an occupied world, a dilapidated apartment complex and an abandoned apartment.

Without Etta, there is no one to claim it.

It's like a punch to the gut, every time she remembers it. She catches herself talking to her – asking questions, requesting a hand – and then she remembers Etta isn't there anymore, won't ever be again. Astrid never had siblings of her own but she considers Etta as the younger sister she never had. When she was an infant Astrid would babysit her, feed her, play with her. Listen to her learn to walk and talk and smile, watch her draw and learn and live. They have spent so much time together, in the lab, in the park, and if there ever was a person sweeter and more precious than Etta Astrid still has to get to know her. This was the girl she taught how to invent a secret language, the girl she brought ice-cream and played hide-and-seek with. For years, she was a constant in Astrid's life, and then she was gone, and then she was back again. So clever, so unbelievably brave, and now they were almost the same age they had gotten along even better. Astrid had come to rely on her, had taken her for granted until she wasn't there anymore, just was gone. She cannot see her anywhere, not anymore. It is like she disappeared from the face of the world without leaving any trace of her existence. She's not in the kitchen, holding a mug of thin coffee and watching Olivia read. She's not in the lab, following Peter's instructions and keeping Walter at bay. She's not in the small room she and Astrid shared, not in the bathroom, even though her tooth brush is still there. It is like she was erased, suddenly, painfully, and the small things that were hers were forgotten but she was extinguished. Death is no stranger to Astrid – she has lost people, has lost her mother early – but for some reason she could never fathom it might be worse than losing her mother at the age of four.

It's what the Observers do. They make people disappear.

And it is horrible, and gruesome, and cruel, and Astrid cannot come up with proper words to describe what she feels even though she has been taught to do exactly this. It is like some vital part of her is missing but she does not have the voice to tell anyone that _something_ is wrong, both because her voice is a part of what is missing and because she cannot say what else is. She sees Olivia and Peter and Walter and sees Etta in every one of them but nowhere else, and it gets so bad she cannot bear it. _Faith_, her father taught her, and she believes in it.

But it is so hard to believe in a world that is so terribly, terribly twisted.

* * *

Walter hasn't slept in days.

When he closes his eyes – even if he doesn't, and it does not make things easier to bear – he can see her face. It follows him everywhere: her smiles, her laughter, her happiness. Her strength, weariness, anger, worry. Not fear, he never saw fear in her. Perhaps it was there the day she told Peter who she was, because it is the only occasion Walter can imagine her face wearing a layer of fear. But he wasn't there at that time, and she isn't here anymore, either.

Walter grieves the cruelty of the universe.

The day Peter was born was sunny and warm, almost too warm for a September day. Perfect late summer. In between glimpses of grey and red, grey rubble and dust and beton and blood, and of flashes of pain and loss, guilt and need, Walter remembers Elizabeth's face. Worn, tired - and yet glowing with happiness. The tiny bundle of life in her arms, the strength with which she held his hand during those days when everything still was the way it was supposed to be. He also remembers the sadness; the knowledge that, one week ago, a good friend had died, far too young and entirely unexpected, leaving behind a grieving son and widow. A week ago Walter had heard the news, had imagined the boy's pain, the woman's desperation. Had wondered whether he would have grieved his own father so much more if he had known him better, had somehow managed to live up to his expectations. At the same time, the tragedy hadn't touched him. He had remained remote – it was a friend, and not a close one at that – and yet. This one week later, he looks down on his firstborn son and marvels at the wonder of life. And, at the same time, thinks how close happiness and despair can be, because it seems connected, always coming and going together. And now, years later, he watches the dark streets from behind the blinds of the kitchen window while inside his head, voices rage and scream. Fairness, happiness – who said it was what life was about? And still people fought for it, even died for it, and nothing was ever enough. He could change universes to save his son, he could construct devices to watch the Other Side. He could design weapons to pierce the veil between the worlds, could dive into a man's thoughts, convert butter to mechanical energy. He could fight Observers and Loyalists – but nothing of it could ever bring back his granddaughter, nothing could return the beatific smile to Olivia's face. Nothing would give him back his ironic, humorous, patient son, because Etta took Peter with her, as well, and as to Olivia – only time could tell. So, in a way, Walter has lost his entire family the day he crossed the threshold between universes with the best of intentions. And his hell is paved with them.

Cruel, cruel, cruel world. It feels like his heart is ripped out of him over and over and over again.

It is cruel they have lost Etta so quickly after they found her. It is cruel that they had time to get to know her, to get to love her so much. It is pure cruelty Peter loved her so much he doesn't care about anything anymore, it is cruel Olivia allowed herself to love her daughter in the first place. It is cruel Walter started to lean on her, her easy smile, her unspoken words, her generous help. A spitting image of her mother, in character a mixture of both her parents, and she is gone now. Just like that. It was fast, but never fast enough to forget. _A baby boy and an old friend and a son and an almost-daughter and a dead child._ For everything he gains in this world – despite undeserving – he loses something else. Something precious. In pairs, always, like Olivia cannot live without Peter and there is no Peter without an Etta, and everything falls into pieces. The abyss stares at him hungrily, waiting, always waiting. Walter stares back.

_Hello and Good Bye._

* * *

Olivia.

She knew. She knew from the moment she saw her – the moment the doctor put the tiny bundle of life into her arms – that she didn't deserve the happiness. Didn't deserve the love, the absolute faith her daughter would have of her. For three years, she had floated through life in a dream-like state only to be proven again that the concept of happiness didn't apply to the likes of her. The first time it happened, she had blamed herself both for Etta's disappearance and for Peter's misery. Now, she only feels numb.

Ella died for a cause but not for a reason.

It's an important distinction, important enough she clings to it with every ounce of strength she has left. Her beautiful, wonderful daughter died. Olivia lost her right after she had found her again. It is cruel, even crueler than anything she ever experienced before. Nothing compares to it. Not the pain of her stepfather beating her. Not when she lost John and Charlie. Not when she awoke to realize she had been replaced, that Peter loved another image of her. Nothing compares to the agony of losing a child like this. Peter can hold her, but his arms feel unreal and hollow. She knows he does not hold her but wishes to hold Etta, instead, and a tiny part of her wonders whether she should be jealous. It is futile, though. Peter can hold her as if she was insubstantial, and Astrid can bring her coffee and leave her alone in the dark room that once belonged to her daughter, and Walter and Phillip can go on planning and plotting and searching. Olivia knows she will, too, eventually, because the last thing Etta wished for was for them to go on. It is her cause, _Etta's, _this mission Olivia began twenty and something years ago. And Olivia only wanted John back, and then she didn't want Peter to leave, and then she wanted Peter back. And somehow it turned into this - a quest to save the world, to save the future, because there was a little, blonde girl with eyes as bright as the skies and hands as warm as her heart, and the future was for the girl and the girl was the reason Olivia fought for. But there is no_ reason_ Etta needed to die. It is not because the Observers took over the world. She didn't die because she was brave, or because she was a member of the resistance. Etta didn't die because they made a mistake or because they were not careful enough or because they were hunted down. The world didn't need her to die, her death didn't save people, didn't bring anyone else back. If there ever will be a reason why her daughter died, Olivia reckons, it is because she didn't go to find her immediately, because she, Olivia, didn't force Peter to turn around immediately to come to her aid. If there is a reason why her amazing daughter is dead now it is the fact that Olivia wasn't there to save her. Mankind? Earth? Salvation? Nothing matters. Nothing can ever measure up to the value of the one life that was lost.

She should have told her the story behind the bullet she wore around her neck for such a long time.

Etta is gone. Nothing Olivia can do to bring her back, nothing to make undone what has happened. The world continues turning, slowly, cruelly, she wishes it wouldn't do so when Etta isn't allowed to go on spinning with it but she is helpless here, as well, cannot do anything to change the pattern. Thirty years of waiting _(for Peter) _and twenty years of darkness, three weeks of knowing her daughter and decades of love. Despite everything, Olivia loves them: Walter in his silent grief, Astrid and her helplessness, Phillip in his calm strength. She loves John, his security, his stability, and Charlie as her best and oldest friend. And Lincoln, both of them, and even other Olivia, so different and yet so similar. She loves Rachel and Ella, and her mother, on both sides, and all the fractured and broken people that once have been Cortexiphan children. And she loves Peter, loves him so much it hurts physically. So much she cannot hold him, cannot deny him the only thing he has left. _Etta wouldn't have wanted it_, her conscience tells her, but she knows her daughter wanted _exactly this. _It is a wish no mother ever wants to see come true, a promise she never would have given to anyone else. Only to Etta, Etta, always Etta. So Peter goes on a quest for revenge and Walter and Astrid bury themselves in work again and Olivia grieves. Silently, lonely, because there is nothing left to share. All that is left is a memory full of images, crystal-clear images of a child and a man and a woman, and days that were better than these.

A beautiful baby girl joins Ghost Peter in Olivia's mind.

Only one word remains, printed onto cheap paper in cheap print; bold, red, capital letters. Underneath it: delicate features, a stern expression. So eager to learn, so patiently teaching. So strikingly familiar and yet so different. Etta Bishop. A sweet face, blond hair and calm eyes and a mission.

RESIST.

Not a reason, but a cause.


	5. fragmented

_Chapter 5 – Episode 5 An Origin Story_

**fragmented**

_Summary: Olivia is waiting for something. Peter is going somewhere. _

_Warning: -_

_Set: post-ep to Episode 5 of Season 5._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended. _

_A/N: Many thanks to red lightning, ZeusFluff and amynoemi! Another chapter for the three of you. I really, really appreciate your returning visits to read and review! I hope this one will be to your liking, as well. And for all the other, anonymous readers - for you too, of course!^^  
_

* * *

Olivia cannot remember why they used VHS tapes, when 2013 had been all about USB sticks and SD cards and HDD recorders. If she remembers correctly it was Walter's wish to record all those videos, his argument being he would be able to relive the scenes without needing an IT specialist to install the video devices. So his old, hand-held video camera was used whenever they recorded family events, and there had been many of them.

The only one that was left was the cassette of Etta's third birthday, but it didn't matter. Olivia didn't need a grainy, old TV and dusty VHS player to see the images she had stored away in her head. There are many, many images, memories of ages past and lives gone by. Sometimes they shine, and sometimes they are dark and painful. But she never was able to run from herself.

Olivia is waiting.

_Etta is two hours old. A bundle of flesh and skin, warmth and heart in her arms, and Olivia never felt more tired and more elated before. Peter has climbed onto the hospital bed next to her, balancing on the edge precariously, and his eyes shine brighter than the brightest stars. The night sky is crystal clear. _

_"She's beautiful." Peter still whispers._

_Olivia laughs, exulted. "She looks weird."_

_"She does not," Peter protests, his eyes following the way Etta's face scrunches up at the sound of her parents' voices. "She is absolutely perfect."_

_"Yes." Olivia watches both of them, her heart spilling over with happiness. "Yes, she is."_

_Peter looks up at her, his face is soft and defenseless and he looks incredibly young. His smile makes her heart beat faster. She could swear she blushes. _

_"I love you, Livia. You and Henrietta. I love you both so much."_

_Unable to hold his honest glance Olivia looks down and caresses Etta's face. But her smile is wide. _

_"I know."_

_And with the clarity of someone who experiences a sudden revelation she suddenly knows this: Olivia will always remember the warmth of her daughter in her arms, the way her tiny hands curl around Olivia's fingers. The light in Peter's eyes as he watches both her and Etta, the catch in his voice when he calls her by her name for the first time. She will remember the stuffed bunny next to the bed, set in a sea of flowers, the one Phillip Broyles brought when he visited a few hours ago. Olivia will always remember the way Walter's eyes are wet and swimming, the way Astrid's expression is like a child's with her expression of amazement and wonder. She will remember the smell in the air – hospital and flowers and Peter and baby powder and lavender soap – and the sounds in the room – the wind at the windows, the rustle of stiff hospital linen, the steady buzz that tells her there are people outside her own little bubble, Olivia's island of safety. Right now she feels complete, like she has been waiting for this moment her whole life. Like everything – her stepfather, John, even Charlie – were only markers that lead to this moment, however much she loves them. Olivia will remember Rachel and Ella, her sister with tears in her eyes and a huge smile and her niece with an expression of wonder similar to Astrid's, and the way they seem reluctant to enter her room and then complete the atmosphere of _home_ that has entered the room the second Peter and Etta stepped into it. There is no way on earth Olivia will ever forget the absolute happiness she feels when she sees her entire family in her little hospital room. And, at that moment, she cannot imagine anything that could tear her world apart. _

Peter is moving.

_She's gone. She's not anywhere. Olivia finally fell asleep in Etta's bed, her blond hair all over the pillow, and although he knows he shouldn't do it he cannot help himself: Peter lifts Etta's image, the one framed portrait in the room, and holds it next to Olivia's sleeping face. Olivia is older, and more haggard, and she has lines around her eyes Peter would swear weren't there when he looked at her the last time. When was it? He isn't sure but it feels like an eternity. Etta is gone. Etta is dead – he knows it because he feels the darkness deep within him, feels the cold that once was the life and love that were his daughter. It is like a black hole, sucking up every emotion he has, every bit of hope. Olivia was the one who always was able to give him strength, then it became Etta, and he wonders whether he should feel guilty that he can look at the woman he loved more than anything once and think of someone else. Like happiness, like hope, his love for Olivia seems to have been pushed aside entirely by something else. Peter pauses to evaluate it: anger, fury, the desperate wish to get back at his daughter's killers – revenge. There had been a time when he had stopped others from following the exact same sentiment, now he is ready to sacrifice everything for it. He'll just wait until Olivia is awake again._

_Etta. Etta._

_His daughter died the way she lived. Oh, she was brave, and she was beautiful, and Peter knows she was far from perfect but she was his daughter. Etta died for something she believed in, but the thought doesn't soothe his grief. It is worse, in a way, knowing his daughter died for something he has no way to change. The Future. Walter's videos and Olivia's search won't get them anywhere. They have to hit the Observers somewhere it hurts them most, but he cannot imagine anything that might hurt them. Well, not now, anyway, but he will. _

_He sees her die._

_Alone in the dilapidated building, carefully sliding past doors and windows on her search for Walter. She knows her parents are somewhere in here, as well, but she risks neither their nor her safety by calling out their names. "Walter?" Her voice is incredibly loud in the silence of the house, so she falls silent again. The gun in her hand is heavy, a reassuring weight. It's a weight she got used to a long time ago. Of course, no weapon can keep the Baldies at bay for long. But usually it is enough to stall them. Walter has to be here somewhere. When she first freed him from Amber she did so because she thought he could be helpful. But even though he is annoying and flighty sometimes, she has come to like him. She can almost imagine him playing with her twenty something years ago, the grandfather she did not have for the last years of her childhood and teenage years… She never had a grandfather before and now she has both a grandfather and parents. Sometimes she still pauses to marvel at the wonder of it. But right now she is focused on her task entirely: find Walter and take him away. Observers are on their trail. They need to run. _

_There is a sound behind her. _

_"Walter?" She begins to turn and his name is on her lips. Darkness – the feeling of wrongness that accompanies the appearance of one of the Observers – and it materializes from thin air and takes form the second Etta has cocked her gun. She pulls the trigger – too late – he has already reached her, and his simple gesture throws her off her feet as if a bulldozer has hit her. Etta has run so many times, has stared death in the face again and again. Somehow, she knows this is it. She defies the Observer's mind attack as long as possible, and when she realizes what he is looking for, she allows him a glimpse. The satisfaction at his confusion is overwhelming. The pain follows not shortly behind, and Etta gasps for breath. Mom's hands are warm, her face full of despair and pride, and Dad holds her like she is a little child again. And Etta feels loved._

_Red blood and green eyes and cold hands. Her blond hair matted with blood, her hands clamped around Olivia's. Her shaking frame in Peter's arms, losing blood, losing strength, losing whatever makes humans human. And then she was gone, just like that. And Peter knows he will not ever forget the feeling of her dying in his arms, the soft sound when she heaved her last breath. Her shaking body still feels real in his arms. _

Olivia is waiting.

_That morning, Etta made her first attempt at two-legged locomotion, and her face when she found herself on her bum again was so priceless Olivia started laughing helplessly. Etta frowned and Olivia laughed even harder. Lifted her daughter into her arms and, telling her she had done great, she hugged her tightly. _

_"Wait until your Daddy sees you, sweetheart. He'll be so proud."_

_She is barely two years old, her precious, precious little girl, and although she can be a handful Olivia enjoys having her so close enormously. It is like every day the sun rises and sets on Etta's face for her: she gets up and checks on her, prepares breakfast for both of them, goes for a walk. Works on case files and cases while Etta takes a nap, then they have lunch. The afternoon flies by – a walk, grocery shopping, more work while Etta plays on her blanket in the living room. Peter comes home and hugs Etta, kisses Olivia over Etta's head and sometimes they just stay there, on the living room floor, and play and laugh and talk. Peter prepares dinner, or they go out, and they bathe Etta and take her to bed together. Peter reads her a story. Olivia listens, Etta listens. Sometimes Peter falls asleep, and sometimes Olivia, and mostly Etta. _

_Olivia would have thought it would become boring, but it does not. Time flows like water, images flash by. Every day is a miracle. Etta is a miracle. She smiles and laughs and starts talking, calling out for Mommy and Daddy and Bonny, her favorite stuffed bunny. She cries, too, and throws temper tantrums. But on other days she is a sunshine. Olivia catches herself looking up from a file – she works from home, has abandoned field work to her younger colleagues without any regrets now since the world is saved – and finds her daughter watching her. She is mesmerized by the way the baby girl's eyes follow every movement of hers, how she seems to sense all her emotions before Olivia herself knows how she feels. Etta is incredible and sometimes she asks herself how she did it, how such a perfect being could have come from within her. She never had a perfect home – a perfect family, not even a perfect life – how can perfection originate in someone as imperfect as her? Olivia has lived through so much pain and hardship she can barely believe the happiness she is feeling is meant to be for her. At night, sometimes, she wakes up seized with anxiety making her pulse race. It is worst when Peter's not there to hold her, wrap her into his arms and calm her. Olivia isn't made to be a mother. How could she offer a baby what she herself has been denied? She is so terribly, terribly twisted. And then Etta looks at her and smiles. Oh, and how wonderful her smiles are. They take with them everything that worries her. _

_"Try it again later, love," Olivia tells her daughter and sits her down on her blanket again, already replaying the later conversation with Peter in her head. Etta scowls at her mother adorably and robs back to the sofa where she grabs the edge and tries to right her little body, and wobbly but steadfastly she starts to make her way along the couch a second time. _

_By the time Peter comes home she is able to cross the living room – with a little help by Olivia – and Olivia wants to take Peter's facial expression, wants to frame the image and never stop looking at it ever again. He is incredibly beautiful when love shines from his eyes like this, and when he looks up at her with the same expression clearly directed at her Olivia swallows tears and kisses him until she forgets her own name. _

Peter is moving.

_Etta is perched on the window sill, almost hidden behind the old curtains, watching the street with eagle eyes. Olivia left four hours ago, threw them both a smile and promised Walter to bring home something else than egg sticks. There is nothing to watch on the street but the girl refuses to let herself be distracted. It is as if she wants to bring her mother back unharmed by just concentrating on the dark expanse of empty street. _

_"Hey."_

_Sometimes he is still unsure as how to talk to this grown-up, harder version of the baby girl he knew and loved so many years ago. Sometimes it is as simple as breathing. _

_"Hey."_

_Immediately, a memory flashes in front of his eyes: Olivia, her face in the shadows but her hair a bright halo, turning towards him with a half-smile just like the one flashing on Etta's face right now. For a second he is stunned into silence by the similarity between both women. _

_"What are you doing?" He saves himself by talking, one of the things he does best. Etta turns back to the street, her hair falling over her face. Her resemblance to Olivia disappears as fast as it came. _

_Etta shrugs. "Sometimes I think she will be back faster when I wait for her."_

_Peter does not answer. She turns to him again._

_"I know it is nonsense."_

_"I didn't think it was," he replies and comes to stand next to her. The streets are slowly sinking into the eerie half-light that is sunset in a city without a sun. "I've come to understand that with your mother, things are rarely the way they seem."_

_Etta watches him from the corner of her eyes, like he is someone she has to evaluate before deciding how much she can say. _

_"Why do you say that?"_

_Peter smiles involuntarily. "Because standards don't apply to Olivia."_

_There is a brief silence which Etta breaks again. "I don't know much about you – about her. I know she was a Fringe agent long before I was born. I know she saved the world but I don't know how. And if she did…" The young woman looks down onto the street. "Why is it like this, then?"_

_Sighting, Peter follows her gaze. "I shouldn't be the one to explain Olivia's story, I think. But I know how much she loves you, Etta."_

_"Do you love her?"_

_"What?"_

_She answers his surprised gaze with a steady one of her own. "Sometimes I think you do. Because of the way you look at her. But the two of you… You never touch. Somehow…" Etta shakes her head, hesitates. "So much was lost, wasn't it."_

_"You weren't," Peter says, because it is the only thing he can think of. "You weren't lost, Etta. Seeing you again – having you back like this – is the best thing that ever happened to me. To us. Olivia, too… She loves you so much. We love you more than anything."_

_ Etta smiles, her head bowed and her eyes seemingly searching the street. "I'm glad I found you, too."_

_A woman appears around the corner of the street, her blond hair trailing behind her. Etta jumps up from the window sill, visibly relieved. _

_"She's back!"_

_Peter smiles. "Told you so. Your mother is tough."_

Olivia is waiting.

_It's a beautiful early-summer day. May 2016. Thinking back, she shouldn't have gone to the park, knowing 2016 would be the last year the world would have. On the other hand they both had forgotten, or rather, all of them had hoped. That it was over, finally, that everything was fine again. That the Observers wouldn't take over Earth. Because living in fear was like not living at all, and Olivia had Peter and Astrid and Phillip and Walter, and they had Etta, and everything would be fine. Had to be. Only it wasn't, not anymore. _

_The ground starts shaking first._

_Olivia had felt it the entire morning, the pressure in her head. Like a migraine waiting to be born. But it hadn't been too bad, not bad enough to stop her from spending a day at the park with the two people in the world she loved most. Now it is slowly building up to become something unbearable. Reading was hard but manageable before, she could ignore the rising tension in a way the few other sensitive beings couldn't. Dogs had been barking for no reason, birds seemed out of their minds today. Nothing big, nothing anyone noticed until it was too late. When she thought of it later on – and how many hours would she agonize over it, blame herself, hate herself for her blindness and her naivety and her stupid belief everything would be fine – she couldn't understand how she could have missed it. But Olivia suppresses her headache with Aspirin and they go to the park. And the Observers come and nothing ever is the same again anymore. _

_When people start screaming, the Observers appear. _

_Olivia's first thought is for Etta. The girl has been playing with dandelions, picking them and forming them into a wreath. Olivia is reading and Peter is watching her. Etta is almost five now, a blond girl with eyes just like her father's. Sometimes Olivia looks at her and _sees_ Peter, sees the way he looked at her, sees familiar anger and the streak of arrogance that has been subdued in Peter by years of experience and weariness and probably will be in Etta, too, one day. The book drops from her numb hands, lands on the blanket. It is forgotten the second Olivia sees it happen: a dark figure appearing from thin air behind her daughter, its hands outstretched. A black suit, a black bowler, skin white and lifeless like a ghost's. These men have hunted her in her nightmares but they are gone, have disappeared when she changed the future. And yet they are there right now, and Olivia watches them stretch out for the most precious being on earth- _

_- And she is back, suddenly and abruptly, in her own body. Regains control of her limbs and of her mind. She pays no heed to the scream that fills the air and reverberates in her mind. Etta is still frozen to the spot she stood in when everything ended, her face a mask of surprise and rising fear. Peter's head swivels around to Olivia first and then back to Etta. What he sees is a girl in a meadow of flowers, blond and beautiful, and her face shifts into a mask of tears when she realizes her mother is looking at her with a horror she never saw before. _

_"Etta!"_

_Peter's clever, he might not know what is about to happen but he trusts her instincts. Olivia is stumbling, falling over her own feet in her fruitless attempt to get to Etta as fast as possible, and Peter knows something is terribly wrong. Calling out their daughter's name, he stretches out his arms. _

_"Come here!"_

_The urgency in his voice mingles with the wordless screams of pure terror that hang in the air. _

_Olivia has finally regained her balance. She starts running. Peter is already moving, too. The screams rise in volume. Olivia is on her feet but she feels like moving through wet sand. Etta starts moving, too, but slowly, slowly, too slowly. She takes four steps and then it happens: the Observer appears behind her. _

_The screams reach a climax. _

_Olivia realizes it is her who is screaming, and then something hits her head and the world turns black. _

Peter is moving.

_She'll be there. _

_Olivia stares past him across the endless expanse of the table between them. A normal, regular café, regular customers, regular human beings. Nothing in here reminds of the events of the last weeks. It is like there never was an invasion, as if their planet (their time, rather) still belongs to them and to no one other. But outside the window the wall is full of photographs, missing and lost and dead people all staring down at them. Peter refuses to look at it. _

_Etta is somewhere out there. _

_Olivia seems like she lost her soul. She does not speak, does not react, just follows him from shelter to shelter, from hospital to hospital. Hadn't he seen her desperate gaze in the hospital yesterday, scanning the rows like a starved would scan his surroundings for edibles, he would think she didn't care. But long after he had left the hospital, after he gave up any hope to find Etta there and focused on finding her elsewhere instead, Olivia remained there. Peter has no idea what she did there. For a second, anger flares up in him. Olivia is like a living dead, a doll without a soul – like Etta took her with her. And Peter hates her – his Olivia came to look for him, his Olivia fought the fate of her world, his Olivia never gave up. _Etta is not dead. _He would know if it was otherwise. He would. _

_The next shelter. The next place. Etta'll be there. _

_The second Peter stops telling himself that he will break, he knows it. Break like Olivia seems broken now. _

_"Let's go, Livia."_

_He pays their bill, a ridiculously high one, and takes their bags. Olivia follows him like a puppy, haggard and silent. His use of her nickname is desperate. Peter is trying to remind herself of who she is but more than anything he is trying to remind _himself_ who she is. His Olivia… No. On the streets, the real extent of what has happened becomes clear. The city has not been destroyed entirely but has been torn apart nevertheless. The streets are grey and dark. People have learned very quickly that fighting against Observers is useless. The first day Police, Fire Men and locals united against the invaders. The attempt was doomed from the start. The grey men must have people placed strategically because neither Army nor National Guard send reinforcements. Three days of fighting and the number of casualties is higher than anything. Resistance is futile. Earth is being invaded, the States, Europe, China, nobody was prepared for an attack from the future. Only slowly, news is starting to trickle back, parts of the States still remain unheard of. The sky is clouded. There hasn't been a clear sky or sunlight for days. Peter has the feeling Observers don't like direct sunlight but perhaps it is just an expression of earth's unwillingness to receive the unwelcome guests. The empty streets are a terrible contrast to the crowded shelters and camps. Too many people were lost, too many hurt, and the only thing the Observers did was to create the shelters and shove the people inside. Those who had a place to go to left. Those who had lost everything – or everyone – stayed. The lowest of low live in conditions too horrible to even describe. The only reason Peter does not shiver when he walks through the camps is that his eyes, his ears, his entire being is focused on finding his daughter. _

_Had he watched Olivia a little bit better, he would have realized that the helplessness and despair in the shelters he brought her to pierced her deeper than he ever would have thought. Perhaps, had he watched her, he would have understood why she remained in hospitals and shelters longer than he did, even after they had made sure Etta wasn't among the lost children. He might have felt what she felt, and might have understood when she finally gave up. But he didn't._

_Etta would be there. He knew she wasn't dead, knew she was somewhere. Waiting for him. His girl would know he would come for her, would find her even if the Observers had whisked her away to the ends of the earth. She'd be there. In the next shelter, the next camp, looking up at him with eyes full of love and trust. And he would take her away, far away. _

_Peter would find Etta. He promised it. _

Etta's bed is hard but it is hers. Olivia lies in it and stares up at the ceiling. Walter is rummaging around in the next room, has slept as little as she has since Peter left. The images are fresh in her head now that she has allowed them to be recalled – Etta, Etta, as a baby, as a girl, as a woman. Peter, smiling, laughing, thinking, searching, Peter angry, Peter sad, Peter telling her he was sorry, Peter holding her after she woke, Peter following her to a field of tulips, Peter holding her hand, Peter pushing away her wet hair, Peter making pancakes, Peter talking to Walter, Peter concentrating on a project, Peter reading a book. Olivia curls herself into a ball, trying to contain all the hurt and pain inside herself. She was weak once, she will be strong now she tells herself. If he only comes home, she will be strong. _Peter. Peter. Peter. _Etta wouldn't want them to break but it was too late anyway, Olivia was already fractured, mere pieces of what she once had been. But it didn't matter, not as long as they were together, did it? Because alone she is fragmented but with Peter she is more.

_Please come home, Peter. I love you._

Olivia lies awake for a long, long time. Peter does not come.


	6. state of entropy

_Chapter 6 – Episode 6 Through the looking-glass and what Walter found there_

**state of entropy**

_Summary: It is their fate: they help others do what they have to do and then wait for them to come back. Astrid, Phillip._

_Warning: Oh-oh. Dear reader, read for yourself but be warned. I didn't mean this chapter to end the way it does.  
_

_Set: post-ep to Episode 6 of Season 6._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended. _

* * *

**i. Con Man**

* * *

Desks, he thinks, are mirrors to a man's soul.

In the way someone keeps his desk, Phillip Broyles can recognize the character behind the person. There are people who clean up their workspace meticulously before even starting their everyday work. They try to keep the space as clean and orderly as possible. Some of them even tend to clean up the shared space, like printer tables and kitchen cabinets and entrance desks, because they prefer order to a general state of entropy. Others have cluttered and littered desks, papers and books and empty cups and cigarette ash mingling in a disordered appearance of homeliness. They don't mind searching for a pen first, or when they notice the letter buried underneath pages and pages of paper should have been returned two days ago. Those are the more lenient people, the ones who don't believe in order or who just cannot keep it. There is a subtle difference between those two types, too, Phillip knows them well. He has watched many people in his time, has regarded many desks and read the character of people from their surroundings. There are few people who aren't as their desks suggest they are.

In a way, Phillip is a better con man than Peter is.

The day the Observers invaded his planet he was away, on a meeting with international contacts of his. It was the only reason he wasn't eliminated as the first wave of Observers took over the White House, the Pentagon, and the headquarters of CIA, FBI and Homeland Security. When he returned he was faced with an army of invaders he had hoped never to see again in his life, and with the polite offer to either take an elevated position and work for the Invaders or kindly leave the place right now. Phillip agreed with the Observer's every demand because he knew it was the only way he would survive. And he had to survive. Phillip Broyles has no wife and no family. His parents have died long ago, aunts and uncles either live far from Boston or have forgotten about him. Family reunions mean he travels a long distance to introduce himself to people he's seen years ago or never before and likely won't meet again. He slowly fades into the background there, has resigned himself to a life as an agent instead. And then Olivia Dunham comes the way, and the Bishops, and Agent Farnsworth, and he finds he has built himself a life around their cases and their interaction and he doesn't want to lose it again, no matter how treacherous. So yes, Phillip Broyles cooperated with the Observers when they came because he knew what he had to lose, and he knew there was only one way to protect it as best as he could.

Oh, and Etta.

Back to the topic of desks. He has known many people in his life, and quite a few Observers. Their desks are mirrors of their souls, as well – empty, completely and utterly empty. He hasn't seen anything on their desks besides their tech, and he doesn't count it as personal belonging. On the other hand, his own desk might be meticulously clean, with a few mementoes that have the air of being important and treasured. But what can be read from them is nothing that resembles the person Phillip actually is. It is a stage, a clear-cut, straight-forward prop to make people believe he is the way he wants them to think he is, to show a man who does not exist. Etta taught him how to guard his mind, so Observers wouldn't see who he truly was. But long before she did so, he had already found a way to do exactly the same.

She'd only brought his mastery to new levels.

So these days he sits at his desk in the new headquarters of what remains of a once-great country. He reads reports filed by people who collaborate with the Observers because they are afraid of them, of people who do what they do because they think it is best for mankind and of people who simply love to be able to order around others. He processes information about possible Rebels and known Resistance members, puts together data on how they work and what might be their next moves. He sends official mementos and hidden messages, tries to inform two parties of which both are aware of each other but never meet. It's a dance on a wire, a dangerous line between what Phillip thinks is right and what the Observers want. The balance in his universe shifted the day the first Bishop crossed an invisible line. It now is so twisted he has no idea how it is supposed to be set right again. He tries, nevertheless. Day after day he talks, writes and listens. And waits. Because there is nothing he can do, really, but wait. The work that must be done can't be done from his position. Someone has to go out and fight, someone has to meet the Observers head-first no matter the consequences. Someone has to sacrifice everything. Someone will lose everything. And Phillip can only watch as the story unfolds, watch and wait.

He never was a patient man. But of course, nobody would ever have suspected that was fake, too.

* * *

**ii. mother**

* * *

Astrid wakes up in another world one day.

Her home has turned into rubble and dust. Her workplace is dusty – well, dustier than ever before – and cold and empty-looking, and emptier than it ever felt before. Her city is a grey, sick monster waiting for its last day. Her life is a staircase, and she has just fallen an entire landing. The new floor is different, darker and feels so incredibly threatening she has no idea what else to do.

It feels like she has been following Peter and Olivia around for years now, decades, even. She babysits Walter and strings together impossible experiments from broken pieces of technology, knowledge and hope. She brings Olivia coffee – its only positive attribute is that it's hot – and listens to Peter's plans without any interjection and misses Etta so terribly it hurts. And all the while she waits for the end, but nothing happens. The only thing she notices is the people around her changing. Olivia is softer, suddenly incredibly vulnerable. Peter has become harder, a strange gleam in his eyes that makes her shudder. And Walter… She knows him well enough to call it hubris. And it scares her, too, as much as the changes in her other friends scares her. Yet still she waits for them, in an abandoned house marked as danger zone, in a room that has a window to another dimension through which her family disappeared without a second look. Somewhere between entropy and order, Walter is searching for his lost memories, and Olivia and Peter are searching for many things, too. For peace, for example, and for hope and happiness and an end of the Observer's occupation of the Earth. And for Etta. The others search and Astrid waits, patiently. While the time that was stolen from her continues to run far too fast she stands in a room she shouldn't stand in, waits for people who, like she, shouldn't exist anymore, and hopes against all reason that there will be a way to fix all of this.

In a way, Astrid is more of a mother than Olivia is.

She is much younger than Olivia and Peter. And they are wonderful parents, she never would take that from them. It is just the fact that she feels so old when she watches them, as if not twenty but fifty years had passed since she had ambered herself and woke again. Perhaps it is the reason why she gets along with Walter so well: she has an old soul, living in the body of a young woman. She has seen so much, all the little details field agents never saw because they saw the intact remains, not what was hidden inside them. Astrid has no photographic memory like Olivia – she is thankful for it every day, she knows otherwise images would haunt for the rest of her life. But she remembers all their Fringe cases, the butterflies, the alien-like viruses, the inhuman humanoids. An image of Walter in her mind is most easily found when his lab coat is covered with slime, gore and worse. At some point, she had always thought, it wouldn't matter to her all too much anymore. This is not correct. Every single event carries its own horrors, and they are cumulative. Every new horror is fresh, burns itself into Astrid's mind with newly startling, newly terrifying intensity. She cannot even think about all the things she has witnessed. On days she wants to rip out her eyes so as to never be able to see any of it again but she knows there is no attempt of subterfuge from the images in her head. How horrible must it be for Olivia, with her perfect memory.

When Astrid is seventeen years old, she falls in love for the first time.

It is late, she knows she's always late like this. But Rafe is intelligent and handsome and very, very sweet. They spend a perfect year together, perfect in every possible way: ice-cream and holding hands and starlit skies and even arguments. Winter nights and cinemas and exams, fall rains and spring trees. She was romantic then, a silly girl with silly dreams and silly notions of the future. They talk about books and people and dreams. She meets his parents and siblings, and he meets her father. Dad tells her she is young, but then, he married her mother at the age of twenty. It is perfect, the time with him, the way she never wants to let go, wants to keep every single minute with him in her memory. Perfect how they fit together, how they argue over insignificant details and apologize simultaneously after a night of sleeplessness and regret. How he waits until her eighteenth birthday to give her the greatest gift she ever received, and how he holds her when she cries. Astrid is eighteen and twenty days when Rafe is killed in a car accident, his car pushed off a bridge by a drunk driver. So she knows how it feels like to lose the other half of your soul. She knows how Olivia feels. She also lost her mother early, she knows how Etta feels, too, and how Walter feels when he watches his son and the woman he regards as his daughter. She feels old, so old, because she knows the pain the world can inflict on a human being. But she knows happiness, too, and love and hope and dreams. Her mother gave her strength, her father gave her faith, Rafe gave her love and Olivia and Peter gave her happiness. And Etta… Etta gave her hope.

So she refuses to give up.

The house is empty. Not only empty of people but soul-less, too, a scary, hungry abyss waiting for her to succumb to darkness. The void is waiting for her to abandon her faith, her hope and her strength, and Astrid refuses to do just that. She's been left behind, like so many other times. She has waited in the lab for Olivia and Peter to return, she has waited for orders from Broyles, has watched Walter while the other agents went out and fought and got killed. Astrid has watched important happenings on a computer screen instead of being right there at the scene. She has spent time in the lab, decoding codes and keys and hidden messages. All the empty rooms and empty hours make her feel old and worn, like a mother waiting for her children to return, knowing there is nothing she can do to speed up their safe homecoming. She can advise them from far, can hover in the backs of their minds, but she cannot help them by being there. Of course, she's been in the field her fair share, too. But even there, she feels like most of what she does is watching. On the other hand, she is aware she is a crucial part of the team. She has learned not to underestimate her own value. Instead, she views herself as a shadow: she is there, she is irreplaceable, and her help is invaluable. She loves her team, her little family, and she loves her life, and so she waits. Peter and Olivia will bring back Walter. They will find out what that plan of Walter's is, they will fight the Observers and they will win. If there is nobody who believes in their success anymore, Astrid does.

It is why Walter feels so calm with her, and why Peter loves her like a little sister. It is why Olivia is drawn to her.

Similar souls recognize each other.

* * *

**iii. love of life**

* * *

The shot rings out clear in the warehouse.

Olivia falls, a hole blossoming on her forehead. The bullet must have been a small caliber, Peter notices with the distant notion of an expert. It didn't blow away the rest of her head. When he reaches for her fallen body, though, his hand comes away sticky and red.

The world has gone entirely silent.

Her eyes are open, but there is nothing left in them. Peter always knew he loved her because of everything he could read from her eyes, as if they were windows to her soul. A lonely, scared, beautiful soul, a heart like a child. But now they are empty, cold, staring up at the high ceiling lifelessly. Her body is still warm.

_No. No. Nononononononononononononono nononononono. _

_She is not dead. _

But her blood is warm underneath his fingers, and her eyes tell him everything his heart refuses to believe. And as Peter cradles her broken body in his arms, feels her life seep out of her between his fingers slowly, and knows in the background, Walter is shouting and Astrid is sobbing, he also knows this is a nightmare.

Olivia will live.

She is indestructible. She still has Cortexiphan in her system, Bell might have shot her but she will regenerate. This has happened before, he has seen it, and what is happening now is only his dreaming mind in his sleeping body, showing him what he almost lost a long time ago. Now he has lost Etta, too, and suddenly Peter realizes what he still has left. Suddenly he remembers her warmth as she settled in between his legs, the tear that ran down her cheek silently as she watched Etta's face talk to them from the recorded message. He should have reacted differently then, he thinks, he should have kissed her and told her how much he loves her. Even if everything changes and nothing remains he will always love her more than anything. It is the first thing he vows to tell her when he wakes up, when he sees her face again. That afternoon that he sat in the train and watched her from the other side of the carriage - it seems so far away, suddenly, because her body feels real and solid in his arms even though he knows this is only a nightmare. He will wake up soon. He wills himself to resurface from the world of nightmares, tells himself Olivia has survived, the bullet never managed to kill her. It saved the world and it saved him and the greatest gift he ever received was the fact that Olivia survived that day. Because without her, Etta would never have been born. Without Olivia, Peter is nothing.

_Wake up,_ he tells himself sternly, cradling Olivia's slowly cooling body closer to his chest. _Wake up wake up wake up._

The wound in her face heals away as the medication takes effect. She draws in a deep breath, her eyes close. And open again. Olivia smiles at Peter, as if life never had left her body before.

"Peter-"

Her hand reaches out and Peter feels the overwhelming relief that she is still alive, still with him, that he cannot stop the smile from spreading on his face. He takes her hand, brings it to his face, and both of them feel the wetness of his tears. Olivia's eyes are glowing windows to her heart as her lips whisper the greatest miracle of time, and Peter just can think how much he loves her and how much he needs her, and that he never, ever will let go of her. He won't, in reality, too, he only now realizes. He has lost so many things already. But Olivia is still there. Every glance, every touch of her yesterday screamed at him how alive she still is, and how much she loves him. Over Etta's death and the Observer, Peter now understands, he has forgotten what is important in this life. In this world. He needs to fight. And for that, he needs Olivia.

And suddenly her body spasms.

"Livia-"

Her eyes roll inward and her arms flail helplessly, and with growing horror Peter watches as droplets of blood splatter his hands and arms as she coughs. Her entire body convulses, her head falls backward as her chest heaves, desperately trying to draw in oxygen and failing.

"No!"

Peter is screaming, holding her body, shouting her name. The warehouse around him disappears but he notices nothing, Walter fades away, September, Astrid, Bell, nothing is left but a well of darkness and cold.

"Olivia!"

She crumbles in his arms, falls away, her eyes now lifeless and empty again, and with a sickening lurch of his heart Peter realizes that she has stopped breathing. Olivia is dead.

And he is not dreaming.


	7. nothing but lies

_Chapter 7 – Episode 7 52010_

**nothing but lies**

_Summary: He crossed the line the second he read her. They are losing themselves, slowly and irreversibly. _

_Warning: Yes, the title is intentional. This chapter is short, too. I don't think there was much to say about the ending of the last episode, and only a few things to be said about Olivia and Peter right now. Around 1000 words, seems pretty perfect… _

_Edit: Just realized it will be three weeks till the next episode is aired… Nooo! I guess I'll have to bridge the time by writing one or two additional chapters to this story._

_Set: post-ep to Episode 7 of Season 6._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended. _

_A/N: For the two readers who leave reviews every time – Thank you so, so much. This chapter (and all the following ones) are for you. If you have a request for the next chapter, please leave me a note!_

* * *

Olivia always had thought the world would die in a glorious display of sound and colors.

A huge explosion, endless ice, a meteor cracking the surface and causing devastation and death. Although all those possibilities don't seem appealing they have one thing in common: they are catastrophes not easily overlooked. Hundreds of thousands die in floods, in hurricanes and fires. Starvation and sickness follow closely. The Observers are no different to what she always expected: they have taken over the world, slowly poisoning it with darkness, carbon dioxide and desperation. Not so many days into the future, if – when – Olivia and her family don't find anything to stop them, the world will die. Mankind will die and leave a devastated planet to a species that is what they would have become anyway, and it will be the end.

But it is not what she thinks of now.

Olivia always thought the world would die with a scream. Ear-piercing, shattering, heart-breaking, an event impossible to miss. Now she knows it was wrong. The world dies with with a small sight With a silent voice, an empty glance. The world dies in a small, dark apartment filled with memories and a huge whiteboard, inhabited by the ghost of a girl and the ghost of a man she once knew. It might be pathetic that she thinks like that but without the two of them Olivia isn't entirely sure she wants to go on at all.

This is where the world ends: in Etta's apartment, the second she realizes what Peter has done to avenge their daughter.

She has suspected for quite some time that something wasn't entirely right anymore. It was the way he looked at her, the way he seemed too cheerful, his eyes too bright. The way he would disappear into the night, seemingly never sleeping, and always had the perfect explanation for his absence when she asked. Olivia prides herself in being able to read people. She knows when someone lies to her, knows when someone is hiding something from her in plain sight. But all of her skills of yearlong observation, the ability she always had to read people, are useless when it comes to Peter. Because she knows him better than she knows herself. She does not need her intuition to tell her something isn't right. She just knows.

They were little things, at first. The meeting with Anil. The reasons for his sleepless nights. But it also was the way he looked at her, his eyes bright and still empty. His lips smiled and his eyes betrayed his lies. It was one of the things she saw in him when they first met: he would play, he would con, he would make empty threats. But he would not lie. There are so many ways of telling the truth without revealing it, so many chances to mislead without telling a lie. It has nothing to do with white lies. It is the simple refusal to tell a lie and the knowledge that every truth hides another one that has kept him together, she thinks, and she is pretty sure Peter himself never realized this. As if he has been lying to himself and the thought is bitter. Because now he is lying to her, too. Perhaps it started the day he left her behind for the first time, promising her to return. Slowly Olivia begins to fear he never did. Peter left her behind, and the thought hurts so much she cannot move. Lies, lies, nothing but lies, and she is caught in the middle of it like in a spider web. Or rather, Peter is caught in it. Olivia stands at the side and sees her world die in the embrace of all the unspeakable things he told her.

He crossed the line the second he read her.

Unforgivable. Unforgivable. There is only one person in the entire world that Olivia would share her mind with. She already shares her heart, so what difference would it make? Peter has seen her sad and angry, tired and unconscious, happy and desperate and terrified. Peter shares her dreams and her soul, shares her grief for John and Charlie and Etta, shares her fear for the earth and her resolve to save it from the Observers. It doesn't matter if he shares her mind, too, because he knows her like no one else does. Olivia told Peter things she never even admitted to herself before. She trusted him with everything, she still would have done so today. She had thought there would be no single moment in time when she would _not_ want to have Peter by her side. Would _not_ want to share her thoughts with Peter. The worse it is that he read her, that he made his way into her head without her explicit permission. Maybe it was the way he did it, so cold, so unfeeling. Unforgivable. The same way Olivia never would let an Observer read her mind, she would never share her thoughts with someone who would try to use them against her. Someone who would use them to hurt her or the ones she loves. The fact that Peter read her – as if she was a faceless stranger, someone who could be played with – is so unforgivable that she cannot even cry for her loss. All the tears that seemingly came so easily after Etta's death are dry. Olivia is a desert – emptiness, emptiness, dry and burning – and only the lump in her throat shows her this has really happened. It suffocates her.

It is so foolish to put the death of a world beneath the death of a few of its inhabitants. But humans are selfish creatures. It is not for the first time that Olivia wishes a person's death undone. But it is the first time she feels the world does not matter all that much in the face of all the pain people can inflict on each other.


	8. shadow of grey

_Chapter 8 – Episode 7 52010_

**shadow of grey**

_Summary: She dies again every time he closes his eyes._

_Warning: I played around in Peter's head a little. Somehow, he became a stranger, don't you think?_

_Set: post-ep to Episode 7 of Season 6._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended. _

_A/N: One more week to go! :) Thank you for the reviews. Thank you so much.  
_

* * *

He's becoming a stranger in his own head.

Peter sees the world and it suddenly is grey. It never was like this before, never. Not even when his mother died, not when he fled his father's influence, not when he met Olivia. _Especially _not when he met Olivia. The world always was a blur of colors, of sunsets and rain clouds and storm skies. But is it that he only sees it grey or has this world already died?

Thinking like this is treason, a betrayal of Etta's memory.

Still, the thought is there.

Peter spends the days in Etta's old apartment, in front of the glass board that has become his entire world. He concentrates on it so hard he is pretty sure he would usually have developed a headache – in a different time, a different universe. He is pretty sure, too, of the fact that he couldn't have gone without food and water and sleep for such a long time before he made himself a weak image of an Observer, but he doesn't really care. Instead, he concentrates on the Future so hard he sometimes feels blood drip from his nose. Wiping it away absent-mindedly, he concentrates on the different lines, tries to grasp at thin strings of yarn that represent the possibilities of the future. It was strange at first, and frightening and disorienting. But he is slowly getting better. Switching times more easily, starting to feel when something important will occur. It is like surfing the waves: he paddles against the breakers, tries to feel when a wave will grow, when he will be able to grab a ride and hold on. Sometimes, he comes to places no human being ever saw before. Scary places, and amazing ones, full of light and shadow, water and space. Leaving them again is difficult sometimes and fairly easy on other times. Once, he was drowning in an underwater world, he switched back just in time to cough out all the water he breathed in. Another time he just closed his eyes and he was back. Those are the pretty journeys, the trips he observes watchfully but does not really want to see. What Peter wants to see are the key events: Observers in Observer's places, doing Observer things. And then he finds the flaw in the scene, the way it has to play out so he can meet his aims. He has the dark feeling people – _Olivia – _would think it cruel and wrong what he does. He rearranges the future for his own needs, his own arrogant, selfish ideas of justice. But the thoughts come slower, get fewer, the more he uses his new ability. He is a stranger in his own mind, watching his doings from the inside. Unable to interfere. Or perhaps he just does not want to? After all, he started this war. He started it in total awareness of what he was causing, where this was leading, and if there is someone who would try to defend him he would stop him immediately. He might not be the way he once was, but he still sees the differences. And he doesn't like them but he doesn't dislike them, either. He has the power to change the future. The Observers have it, too, and they use it, so why shouldn't he? Especially since he uses his powers against them. He uses his ability to rid the world of them. That, alone, should account for something.

Time is a library full of unread books.

Once he approached his mother, in a time far past, and asked her for the way. She smiled, and answered, and he told her he had a mother that had looked just like her. She had shown him her son and said she hoped he'd be proud of her once, too, and he almost would have asked whether she would still love her son when he attempted to destroy a whole planet. He didn't, and Elizabeth Bishop had walked on with her buggy in which three-year old Peter Bishop slept. On other times, Peter lands in the future. The world is grey and desolate, Observers everywhere. Grey, grey, nothing he can see here because, he reckons, he's not used enough to the piece of tech in his head. Or is it just that there is no other way, no other possible future? He has no explanation for that question. He doesn't really care for the future, too, because everyone he loves will die anyway. There is just the matter of the how.

"I'm pretty sure you need to sleep."

It's a troublesome fact he can actually hear the hallucination that looks just like himself.

"Or at least recover. Switch to stand-by. Whatever the baldies do to recharge their batteries."

He tried to ignore him. It doesn't work, he might just as well answer. It is troublesome, too, that Peter does not even care whether he appears to be sane or not. Etta is dead. The world is dead. Olivia is dead.

Or, at least, she soon will be.

"Fine, fine, pig head, continue on. But let me ask you: Do you really think this is the only way?"

Peter feels the wave tug at his mind and throws himself into the current. He lands somewhere in a grey corridor. Makes sure of his surroundings, checks on his condition. When he rounds the corner of the grey hallway a few seconds later, Windmark just leaves through the entrance door. The clock above the desk to the left shows the exact time. He squints at it, commits it to memory. _Back_. He got what he wanted. Tomorrow, a week from now, the Observer captain will be here. It's everything Peter needs to know. He concentrates – he feels time ripple, like the satin dress Olivia wore when he took her out for New Year so long ago, like the- but he does not move. He almost panics, then closes his eyes and breathes in and out slowly. The rushing sound of the river is still loud in his ears. He concentrates – tries – forces his body and mind to return – and then he is back in Etta's apartment, his ghost squinting at him from where he stands on the other side of the glass board. His features are strangely warped by the material and he looks young. A flash of memory hits Peter as he wonders how he might be looking, then he dismisses the thought as unimportant.

"Quite close this time," his ghost comments dryly. Walking around the glass board, he hands Peter a paper towel. The blood he wipes from his nose should be red, he guesses, but the color is muted and dark. Grey. Everything in this damn world is grey. Even his ghost is grey, but that's how it is supposed to be, isn't it? "I suggest the next time you don't try to force the time flow into the direction you want it to."

_Smartass, _Peter thinks. "Stay out of my business."

"Hey," the ghost protests and follows him to the bathroom. "It's _my_ business, too. Trying to kill yourself? Must run in the family."

The water that comes from the tab is grey.

"You know," the hallucination continues, "You and I both know that Olivia isn't dead yet."

_She might as well be. _

"So what?"

"If you want it to stay that way there are different possibilities than this one."

"No." He shakes his head so vehemently he sees grey dots in front of his eyes. "There is no other way. Etta is dead already. Olivia will be, too. Soon."

"So you think you can save her by killing yourself?"

"I know this is the best way. It's about revenge. I need to do this."

"I thought it was about Olivia." The ghost is silent, then chuckles ironically. "My bad."

"It is."

It is about Olivia and Walter and Astrid and about a million other people. But it is for Etta, too. And for himself. For Peter, this is personal. She dies again every time he closes his eyes. Olivia, Etta, does it matter who it is? He once thought he had found a home, a place to stay. It was taken from him the day the Observers took over the world. Olivia and Etta could have died that day, so far away. It seems to him, in fact, it would have been better _had_ they died that day. That way, Peter could just have laid down and died himself.

"Hey." The ghost surprises him, he almost looks worried. He sounds familiar but Peter cannot place the voice. It is like listening to one's own voice from the speakers of an answering machine. "Do you still feel like you once did, Peter?"

Peter looks around the grey apartment – grey walls, grey windows, grey furniture – and tries to feel the way Peter Bishop felt when he met Olivia Dunham. He tries to feel the way Peter Bishop felt when he first kissed her, when he saw her die, when she told him she was pregnant. He tries to feel the way Peter Bishop felt when he saw his daughter for the first time, when she learned to walk, learned to talk. Everything remains strangely muted, colorless, even while the memories remain sharp and clear. Like there is a protective material spread over his memories but he cannot even see what it protects and from what. Or whom.

"This is bad."

The ghost looks seriously upset, paces the room. Peter just looks at him.

"You don't understand."

"What do I not understand?" His hallucination has lifted his head, gazes at him thoughtfully. His pacing has stopped.

"I need to do this."

"Need, want, can." A careless gesture. "Someone out there is waiting for you to return."

_Olivia._

Her hair wasn't grey before, was it? Had there always been such dark rings underneath her eyes? Had she…

Peter feels the grey ocean, feels the tide pull at his legs. Abandoning all reason, he throws himself into it headfirst. This time, it is easy.

_Take me to where Windmark is. I will find him. I will fight him. And I will destroy him. _

Somewhere in his head, in the tiny piece that still knows what matters, someone sobs. Peter stretches out his hands and finds he is a prisoner, now. The sobbing continues, but he closes his eyes and blots it out. The ghost has disappeared, his voice is silent. Outside, the stranger carrying his face continues on his vendetta.


	9. daughter

_Chapter 9 – Episode 7 52010_

**Daughter**

_Summary: Astrid. Drabble._

_Warning: See above…_

_Set: post-ep to Episode 7 of Season 5._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended. _

_A/N: A little interlude. Should have posted it a week ago, I guess… Thanks to all the faithful readers that return!_

* * *

She was a sweet child, adventurous and loving and kind. She's grown into a strong woman. Etta, Astrid thinks, is a perfect blend of both her parents.

Olivia is too doubtful, Peter too sure. Etta is careful but confident.

Olivia rarely speaks her mind, Peter tends towards talking too much. Etta knows what to say and when.

Olivia sometimes is too kind-hearted, Peter can be cruel. Etta is realistic.

Her children, Astrid thinks, are supposed to be like that. All her good qualities and her weaknesses, and their father's – everything coming together in a new life, a new fate. Children are the new beginning and eternity for their parents. Nothing is ever forgotten, all the happiness of the world lies in the eyes of a child.

Astrid really, really wishes for a child herself. Then she remembers where she is.


	10. a human heart

_Chapter 10 – Episode 8 The Human Kind_

**Human Hearts**

_Summary: And I know our hearts are broken and it hurts but this is what makes us human._

_Warning: See above…_

_Set: post-ep to Episode 8 of Season 5._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended. _

_A/N: A proper welcome for heather7000, and for zeusfluff, amynoemi and red lightning – thank you, as always. I don't know whether I'll be able to update next week. I'll do my best but Christmas and family do come first^^ Happy holidays to all of you._

_A/N2: Christmas 2012. Have a wonderful time!_

* * *

Hold your breath and count.

She's there.

She's _dead._

She's there.

She's dead.

But she's _there. _

She's there she's there and she's there and she is so close he can see every line in her face, every movement of her heaving chest. Peter can see himself in her eyes, his own reflection in her beautiful, beautiful irises. Every time he kissed her, every time he touched her, every time they fought and he worried and she cried and she made him laugh dances in front of his eyes. Images flit past like pieces of a mirror, reflect and take hold. The cool agent who forced him out of Iraq and into the journey of a lifetime. The woman who led him through Fringe cases and events. The girl who fled to a field of white tulips, the teenager who shot her stepfather, the woman who taught him where he belonged. With whom he belonged.

_Olivia._

God, and he loves her.

…

After all the nights she has lain awake wishing for him it feels like a miracle that he is there again. His arms are wrapped around her waist, her face is buried against his chest. Olivia can feel every breath he takes, every silent sigh that resonates through his body. Peter's body presses against hers, warm and reassuring and completely _there. _

The lab is dark.

After Etta's apartment has been compromised they don't have any other place to go. Anil offered them another place but all the rooms she has stayed in since she woke up after 20 years of ambered sleep blend together in a haze of nightmares of loneliness, loss and defeat. Staying in the lab – in Walter's sacred place – feels right, feels almost familiar. They have spent days here, nights and weeks and months. Sleeping on the cold, hard floor next to ancient machines and long-dead dreams is the logical extension of her work description, she guesses. The nest of blankets, jackets and pillows is unnecessary, Peter's warmth everything she needs. Astrid sleeps in the adjoining office, her head resting on a pile of books, her delicate frame wrapped into blankets to blot out the cold. Walter is in his own room, in the small bedchamber he always occupied when he stayed at the lab for nights on end. His silent snores are familiar, even soothing, she has heard them during the last weeks and months, they have accompanied her restless dreams. And Peter is there – firm and alive against her – and after dreaming of him holding her for all the time it feels like a dream now that his arms are a firm cage around her. His hands ghost over her sides, his breath warm against her hair. After all the time he avoided touching her he cannot seem to stop now, as if he was afraid she would disappear the second his hand loses contact with her. His arms feel almost possessive but there is nothing else right now she wants but his touch. Nothing but his arms keep her from falling to pieces. She'd smile but it still hurts to think of how she had to persuade him to do what had to be done. In the silence of an ancient, humming refrigerator and a siren somewhere far away, her own heart beat is loud in her ears.

"Livia."

He knows she's not asleep. His voice is barely a whisper, still. Olivia strains her neck to look at him but she only sees his black silhouette against the even blacker darkness of the lab.

"Do you think it will ever go away?"

Peter's voice is strained. A few hours ago he was crying in her arms, his entire body shaking with the force of his sobs. The second her arms wrapped around his shoulders he clung to her as if she was the last pillar standing upright and he needed her support. She is fine with that as long as it means she can lean on him again, as well. But she knows he is talking about something else entirely, so she contemplates his question. She doesn't know who was more surprised at the fact that his ability to see the time flows hadn't disappeared with the tech: Walter or Peter. They shouldn't have been. Even she could see that something that rearranged the structure of the brain as severely as the device did would not cause reversible changes.

"It altered your brain, Peter. Perhaps it will change back with time. Maybe your sight will return to normal again."

"Hmm."

He doesn't sound convinced but he does not doubt her, either. She knows he knows that she is telling the truth. And because neither of them knows more about it nobody can tell what will happen next. Well, strictly speaking, at least. For a whole while, Peter is silent. Olivia counts his heart beats. _Fifty-three. Fifty-four. _

"I know it's not true but it still feels as if we're abandoning Etta."

There it is. Peter's voice hitches on her name and Olivia feels the searing pain that shoots through both of them, as if their bodies are synchronized. _One._

"I could kill Windmark tomorrow. He passed through the park. He will be there tomorrow, in the place I predicted he would be. I could still go there and make sure…"

"Peter," she reminds him softly and tries to ban the fear she feels at him leaving her like that again from her voice. "You don't have the tech anymore. You can see the timelines, but you cannot influence them. And, besides…"

"It's not what she would have wanted," he whispers. "I know."

It is not what she wanted to say but she leaves it at this. It feels so selfish to be happy right now, as if she is marring her daughter's memories. Because _as long as he is here and holds me_ only lasts as long as it is dark, as long as it is night and she can blot out the terrors of reality. Because _I am afraid of you dying_ is so little in the face of _Etta is dead. _Any other time Peter would have felt she was hiding something, but not today. He is exhausted, physically and mentally, and the only thing Olivia wants for him is to fall asleep and rest. Peter shifts his arms, draws her in closer. Olivia presses herself against his warmth.

"I miss her so much."

"So do I."

She never was good talking about emotions. Peter has changed her. Etta has changed her. Being with the two of them, Olivia feels like she has become another person. Or rather as if she has somehow outgrown the shell that used to be the Olivia she knew. Like she has left her cocoon. She feels anything like a butterfly, though.

"I wanted to take her to Jacksonville, you know?" Peter's voice is a blend of pain and wistfulness. "I wanted her to see our field. And my old house, and my mother. I wanted to see her grow, go to High School. I wanted to see her off for her Prom Night. I wanted…"

He stops, his voice choked. Because he loves her, and because Etta loves her, too, Olivia can say what she says. She stretches and whispers it into Peter's ear.

"I wanted to see her fall in love for the first time."

Peter stiffens abruptly. She cannot help herself – she chuckles. "Oh, Peter, it would have happened. I wanted to talk to her about boyfriends, and school, and about having children of her own. I wanted to see her grow, just like you."

"But she did."

Peter nods slowly, as if he has to back up his own words. The pain is there, clear in his heart and hers. It flows, circulates, as if their linked bodies are one system. It does not become less painful, but the knowledge is soothing.

"She had a life. She had parents who loved her. She went to school – perhaps she even had a boyfriend. She learned. She laughed. She…"

"She lived."

Peter swallows. Olivia squeezes her eyes shut.

"She lived, Peter. She was alive. You and I are proof. We _know_ she existed. And whatever will happen, we won't let go of her. That way, she'll never die."

"But it hurts." Peter buries his face in her hair, his words a warm gust of wind on her scalp. "It hurts so much, Livia."

"It's a human heart, Peter. And I…" She takes a deep breath. "I don't want the pain to stop. Because every breath, every beat – every painful second – reminds me of the fact that she was alive. And that she always will be there."

"I-"

"Peter?"

"Yes?"

"Promise me one thing."

He hesitates. Olivia moves away from him a little bit, enough to peer up at him through a veil of her own hair. She can almost feel the conflicting emotions that dance through him. She knows he's not someone to promise things recklessly, neither is she. She'd rather cut off her own hand than to break a promise, but in order to do that one has to promise things rashly and for the same reason she has never done so. The promises she has given she can count on her two hands, almost. Peter is similar, she knows. Still, she feels not the slightest bit of remorse at the fact that she is demanding something from him she knows he seldom gives.

"What?"

"Don't ever…" She takes a deep breath, gives it one last thought. "Don't ever leave me like that again. Wait." She stalls him when he takes a deep breath to deny her her wish. "Wait. I don't mean you cannot go away, cannot leave for some time. I don't even mean you can't _leave_ me, break up with me or whatever. Just don't… Just don't leave me behind like this time. I don't think…"

_I don't think I could stand losing you again._

Strange. She's not the great talker, never was. The second time in a night she finds herself delivering something like a speech. About her _feelings_, even more. It doesn't get easier but this is Peter, and he needs to understand this. She pleads with the entire strength of her being, like she did the day in his apartment on the other side, when she told him to come back with her, and like she did the last night, on the balcony above the park. She plead then, trying to make Peter see reason, trying to make him understand that he was going away and that it wasn't his path he was heading down. She refused to let him go because she knew if he went, he'd never return. Now she is pleading again, with every fiber of her being. _Don't leave me like this. Don't leave me behind. Please don't do this to me again._

"You are a part of me. Losing you means losing myself."

Big words. And yet, so meaningless. Olivia tries to convey the depth of her plea with her hands, taking his face into them and looking at him.

"Peter. Please."

He looks at her, long and hard.

_Six hundred and twenty one. _

_Six hundred and twenty two. _

_Six hundred and-_

He leans down to kiss her, his eyes dark and soft. The kiss is slow and reassuring, a promise he gives with his heart and his mind, not his words only. Olivia revels in the feeling of his lips on hers, of his hands in her hair. _Slowly, slowly –_ God, she missed his touch, his closeness, his kisses. She missed him so much. And then a spark runs through her body, sets her aflame. She kisses him back until she forgets her own name.


	11. familiar things

_Chapter 11 – Episode 10 Anomaly XB-6783746_

**familiar things**

_Summary: Everything worth fighting for comes with a cost. _

_Warning: Experimental, once again._

_Set: post-ep to Episode 10 of Season 5._

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended. Every sentence that possible might be a quote you think you recognize probably is one and belongs to the respective author. There are many so I won't name them all, but if you want to know specifics don't hesitate to ask._

_A/N: I apologize for not having anything for ep09s5… I hope you all had a good start into 2013. May the year be full of pleasant surprises and happiness for you!_

_A/N2: I only came to like her slowly but Nina Sharpe has made her way into my heart. May she rest in peace. _

* * *

"The price of greatness is responsibility."

She regards him with an unreadable expression in her eyes. Calm, closed, composed, everything she ever was and he never will be. Dust dances in the sunlight that surrounds her, a halo of white and silver.

"Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. As one climbs higher, life becomes ever harder. The coldness increases, as does the responsibility."

Sometimes he thinks she is mocking her. She will never love him, he knows, and he wonders if he ever wanted it differently. There is a path that has never been walked, a road not taken, and sometimes the possibilities are tempting. Then he remembers the price. He presses on, although he isn't sure why.

"The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake."

"Oh," she says, the enigmatic smile playing around her lips. "I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed."

The steady buzzing of the laboratory devices in the background have become his heartbeat. He rarely notices them nowadays.

"It is - last stage of all when we are frozen up within, and quite the phantom of ourselves, to hear the world applaud the hollow ghost which blamed the living man."

There is a short silence in which she sits, rigid and stiff. Her posture always was perfect, he thinks, as if letting go meant losing a part of herself. When she answers, her voice is strong. He didn't expect anything else.

"We can search the world over, for peace, for love, and honor. We can look from now to eternity, for all we do not own. We can search until life is ending, then when life is nearly ore we find we had what we needed, only now, it's too hard to bear."

"Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today."

"Hope…" Her voice catches on the word. "And you, for whom the message was meant, can only wait, and sit at your window, and dream of it."

"That is true."

He hands her victory on a silver plate, metaphorically, grants her the title. In return one of her rare, true smiles graces him. Like a ray of sunlight after a thunder storm, he thinks, and then remembers she was always like that. The three of them were good together, one of them the overachiever, one the realist, one the heart. Brilliancy tripled.

"We could have ruled the world."

"But how great the burden, how heavy the load," she shoots back. "Don't you see what it did to us?"

"Hubris, you mean?"

"Exactly."

He does not hesitate anymore. "For Peter's sake – for my son – I would have done anything."

Her eyes are sad. "You changed the world for him. Are you happy now?"

"It does not matter. He is alive."

"And you are losing yourself again."

"If that is the price."

"You cannot possibly mean this." She is angry now, her eyes burn fiercely. "You always knew how to fight. You always went on, even when every realistic path was blocked. If not for you, much of what we did would not have been possible."

"I don't know." It is the first time he allows himself to voice this doubt. This tiny, little voice in his head, telling him perhaps not everything he ever did was right. "Have you ever thought perhaps we were not meant to do what we did?"

Her shoulders slump. "Many times." Her voice is a mere whisper.

Silence falls between them again. He holds it until he cannot bear it anymore.

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"Why did you do it? What was your reason? You never told anyone."

"Didn't you say I did it because I loved him?" Her eyes are alert now, take in every move, every frown, every minutiae movement. Scientist from head to toe, even bound to a wheel chair.

"What do _you_ say?" He presses. There is something he needs to know more than anything, needs to ensure before he lets her go. "What was your reason to fight, Nina?"

She smiles. It shows him he was right but also explains a myriad of other things. "Can't you guess?"

He can. "Olivia." The one thing that connects them both. Their very own red string of fate.

"I know she does not remember me the way I remember her. She was just a child when her parents died, all alone, all frightened. It took me months to get her to talk to me. But she…" The soft expression on her face is more than he can take. He listens, nevertheless. This is his atonement. "She is strong, in a way. She never gave up. She fought on. But I could see her heart wasn't in it, not for a long, long time. The first time she hugged me was… Wonderful. I still remember the way she looked that day, so small and still defiant, Rachel at her side like a loyal puppy. It was the day I realized I loved them more than I had wanted to."

Her gaze is absent.

"It hurt, you know. I finally understood what you went through, saving Peter, having him back and yet knowing he wasn't yours. She was my little girl for such a long time I forgot that she was someone else's fate, too. Suddenly she is telling me she does not remember growing up with me by her side. Suddenly my Olive is gone, replaced by someone who looks like her, speaks like her, walks like her. But she does not belong to me anymore."

"It's the way life goes," he tells her, trying to offer comfort and yet knowing a parents' grief is inconsolable. "Children grow up."

She shakes her head. "It's more than that. She's someone different and we both know it. She belongs to Peter, now. But she'll always be my little girl."

And she is right, in so many different ways. Olivia is the only person he knows who has lived more than three lives.

"And that," Walter says and covers her hand with his, "Will never change."

Her eyes are watery but she smiles and pats his hand with her free one. "Thank you, old friend."

The sun creeps over the horizon in a brilliant display of hope.

"Do you think we will be forgiven?"

She chuckles at his question. "You never were religious before."

"I'm not. Will children forgive their parents for the mistakes they made in their lives?"

"I don't doubt it. Peter loves you."

"I'm losing myself."

"Don't give up." She presses his hand, her right one cold even through her gloves. "Don't ever give up, Walter. This place needs you. It needs you because Peter needs you and the world needs Peter and Oliva, Astrid and Michael."

"It didn't need Etta." The thought of his granddaughter still brings him to the verge of tears.

"It did," she objects. "It wasn't a role you or I or anyone wished for her, but she was important. She was needed. She was _loved, _Walter, still is. Do what she asked for: Resist. Go on. Fight until the end."

He tries to smile and fails. "You were always stronger than Belly and I together, Nina."

She does not contradict him.

"Don't be afraid."

"I know you weren't."

Her hand grasps his harder, almost painful, her eyes are serious and almost pleading.

"Walter. Du bist verantwortlich für das, was du dir vertraut gemacht."

"I'll watch out for them, I promise."

_These children we love more than anything else. _In his grasp, her hand becomes lighter, less firm. Her smile is blinding.

"Good Bye, Walter."

He lets her go. The warmth remains even as the dream falls away. He is back in his lab, old, dusty and decrepit, and the grey sky is the only thing that reminds him they still are alive.

...

"Olivia?"

Walter grasps her hand as she passes. She looks older, so weary and tired and sad he feels tears gathering behind his eyes again. But her smile is still beautiful. She reminds him of Nina.

"She loved you very much."

Olivia grasps his hand firmly before letting go of it. "I know. Thanks, Walter." As he watches her disappear through the door, he knows she loved Nina, too. She might have different memories but her body remembered. Before the door swung shut, he caught sight of Peter rounding the corner. Olivia walked into his arms and he wrapped his around her, wordless understanding. Her head rested on his chest, his face buried itself in her hair. They stood there like the last two people on earth, oblivious to anything and anyone else.

_Familiar._

With a silent _thud_, the door falls close.

* * *

A/N3: Saint Exupery's "Du bist verantwortlich für das, was du dir vertraut gemacht" is translated into "You are responsible for what you have tamed". The expression "vertraut machen" though rather means "become familiar with", which, in my opinion, is softer and gentler than "tamed" and sounded better to my ears. Hence the title.


	12. love, hands

_Chapter 12 – Episode 11 The Boy Must Live_

**love, hands**

_Summary: Eight times._

_Warning: There was nothing in the last episode that caught my special interest so I settled for a little challenge. Chronological, for once._

_Set: post-ep to Episode 11 of Season 5. Spoilers for many others (look below for a list).  
_

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended. _

_A/N: Only two more episodes to go. This chapter turned into some kind of memory lane for me... God, I love this series. _

_A/N: And the title of the readers of the week goes to... Tadaaah! One anonymous guest (you were the only one that left a review, yes, I mean you) and ref51907, who both made my day. Welcome, and thanks to both of you.  
_

_Prompt: _"Sometimes we make love with our eyes. Sometimes we make love with our hands. Sometimes we make love with our bodies. Always we make love with our hearts."

* * *

_[you looked so tired]_

There is a woman waiting at the end of the stairs.

Peter hears his name and reacts, and she is blond and grey-eyed and has a nasty gash on the right side of her forehead. In the midst of the crowded hotel foyer she does not stand out, she is plainly-dressed and of average height. Women like her are his taste, actually – blond, with strong features and deep eyes – and yet there is nothing like that in his mind when she extends her hand and he takes it. He shakes it with his usual vigor and remembers too late that most women flinch because his grip is too tight. This woman – she does not react.

_–Sweetheart, we all know someone who is dying. –I have your file. _

Suddenly he hates her – hates her delicate features and her pleading eyes, her creamy skin, her blonde hair. Peter hates her injured forehead and the tiny break in her voice. –_I beg you_. He hates her voice that does not seem weak anymore as she threatens him, _the file the FBI would say does not exist, _how her eyes bore into his and force him to change his plans. _And there it goes. _Four days, she said, so he follows her from the hotel to the airport and spends the most uncomfortable flight of his life sitting next to her and trying to ignore her. Exhaustion is etched into her features so deeply he thinks she might collapse but she walks three steps ahead of him the entire time until the alarm resounds and steel doors open and there he is, back to where he ran from in the first place. Back to the one person he never wanted to see again.

_[you could have let go, you know]_

It is like watching a picture. A painting, only Peter never had an eye for art. A photograph, rather, because she is as real as one. People look at photographs and know this one thing will never be theirs, be it a moment, a place or a far-away memory. Looking at Olivia is a lesson in _Keep your eyes on the road, pal,_ no touching allowed. _(He wonders where the urge to do so comes from, anyway.)_

Every time she goes down into this tank he wonders whether she will come back.

She goes in for a multitude of reasons but the one reason that matters is the one she should not be acting on, at least that's his opinion. –_You're gonna be fine. _A silly thing to say since she obviously isn't, as much as she pretends she is. A few hours later he thinks he never held a half-naked woman in his arms before without thinking of sex but the only thing he thinks when he holds her is that her hair smells like salt and chemicals and that her skin is cold. _–Hey Peter_. And that her hand that clamped around his arm was so much stronger than her shaking body felt in his arms. _(Desperation, perhaps, but Olivia Dunham isn't desperate, never is.)_

_[but we tried so hard, so hard]_

Her voice is hesitant. Her eyes won't meet his and she looks so frail he wants to hold her but doesn't dare because he thinks she might just be falling apart, right there. Her hands are hesitant, too, one wrapping around his neck, one stopping right before him and curling to a fist on his chest. –_Peter, it's me. _ Her lips are soft, searching, and every quiver of her being screams with the fear of being rejected. _(I don't plan on letting you go, you know.)_ He can just tell her by holding her but he's as hesitant as she is. The light of the skyline is blinding, explodes behind his closed eyes like a firework. There is nothing more than her – Olivia, Olivia, Olivia, his whole being reaches out to her. He might have been told he was supposed to fix a universe but they didn't expect him to, not really. And besides, he can't. He can't fix the universe, he can't fix his father, he can't even fix himself. He cantry and try as he might but he's just himself. He's never really had a home since the day his mother _(the other one, at least, damn it is hard to differentiate two lives that both belong to him) _died. He has given up the hope of ever finding a place for himself. He never thought the answer would be so close, so easy. _–You belong with me._ And so incredibly, inexplicably _right. _

_[how could I ever, ever]_

He could watch her sleep forever if not for the feeling of guilt that rumors in his guts like cancer. His hands feel like ice.

_Peter. _His name falls from her lips like a prayer, her eyes search for him fervently. The smile is tiny but beautiful, just the way he remembers it, and he never felt more tainted.

Once upon a time, a time so far past he barely remembers, his mother told him a story. It was something about a girl and a boy falling in love (_Don't laugh, Peter, it is going to happen to you one day and when it happens I want you to be happy)_. It was such a silly little story, especially for a child who had no notion of life and love and such. It ended with the boy realizing that he would never mistake the girl's hand for someone else's again, as he had done once during a party game, and they made up and lived happily ever after. Years later he happened to stumble upon an ancient book, buried somewhere between her personal items. She had altered the ending in her story for him. In the original story the girl died, and the boy had only been able to see her as a ghost for one day until they were forced to part forever. He hadn't thought much about it then, the book was precious because it had belonged to his mother, the story was trivial. –_Don't apologize._ But suddenly it is so clear in his mind, so horribly obvious. Olivia still does not know what he did, what he did to her, he dreads the moment she will find out. Peter doesn't think he has the courage to tell her. She is beautiful even in her exhausted and beat state, her hair, her skin, her hands – they _are_ different, so terribly, completely different. He realizes it now but it is too late. Once he tells her she won't smile at him like this anymore. –_If it wasn't for you… _She might never smile at him again.

He holds her hand tighter than ever before. Olivia notices it and thinks it is because he has her back again – in truth Peter dreads the moment he has to let go.

_[there is a place somewhere]_

_ –Don't._

The tulips at her feet are burnt to ashes. White tulips, white ashes, her hair is white in the light of the moon. –_I'm not scared. _Come to think of it, he never was. He felt surprise and shock, and sometimes worry, but pure, unaltered fear he couldn't remember. Olivia taught him that. _(Years later, because the worst he can imagine is losing her and it already happened far too often.)_ But right then he is small and young, and the girl in front of him is small and scared and pretty. –_You've got to try something, right?_ The night wind is cool and fresh and her hand is small and real in his and the white flakes feel warm on his skin. –_Imagine it how you want it to be and then change it._ If it only was that simple. He's young and lost but he knows it is not that simple, never. Either way, everything seems easier the second he takes her hand. She is amazing.

Some memories get lost in the course of life. Some memories are destroyed by altering fates, or overwritten, he has no idea how to put together the pieces. Their first meeting is not a memory Peter still has but when he takes Olivia's hand he knows they are meant for each other. Sometimes he wonders whether they have met in previous lives – but with their wild agenda of meeting, falling and losing each other he wouldn't bet on it. Although – if their lives already were re-written once without anyone of them noticing, it is very possible it has happened more than once before.

_[you can do this]_

Together is not a concept he finds trivial when it comes to them.

–_Don't say I never took you anywhere. _

Together means so much more than he ever thought. Means waking up next to her every morning (_for the rest of his life)_, listening to her brush her teeth in the bathroom, to her steady breathing when she falls asleep. Together means meeting her again every day, as if she was a foreign subject he could study for the rest of his life. Every encounter, every hour, every minute with her seems frozen in his mind. His entire being is a snapshot of Olivia's at every stage of their time.

Together.

Together means he gets to prepare breakfast for her every Sunday. It means going out on free days, watching Walter on the swing in the playground. It means trivial things like shopping and cleaning up the kitchen after cooking together, even cleaning the apartment isn't a bothersome chore anymore when he coaxes her to climb unto the sofa so he can vacuum, and she splashes soapy water at him when he tries to ambush her at the kitchen sink. It means he can call her without any reason, at whatever time it is, and even when she sounds sleepy and annoyed it is her voice he listens to as if it was the most beautiful song in the world. It means he recognizes her (_I don't know what's happening but this is not you), _he could look at a dozen mirror images and he wouldn't hesitate to find her. Together means the past and the present and the future, whenever, wherever, and it feels far less sappy than it might sound. –_Peter? I love you_.

He'd save worlds for her alone, be it in his power or not.

_[tell me a story with a happy ending]_

So he was erased from this timeline.

So Olivia doesn't know him.

So Walter and Astrid and Broyles don't know him, either, there is a stranger where he once was (_Hi, I'm Lincoln Lee). _Someone else where he lived, someone else where he worked, someone else where he belonged. _Belongs._ It is his right to be there, he thinks, his place, how could they forget him? And then he thinks, perhaps not, perhaps he is in the wrong place. Wrong place, wrong time and wrong people, enough material for a million stories that have come before his. (_But she smiles just like her.) _This Olivia looks like his Olivia (w_e've been through this before, haven't we)_ and talks and walks and behaves just like _his. _And now she is looking at him like _she_ should. He can see himself in her eyes and he knows, without fail, that he is in the right place. Both of them are. He lifts her up and whirls her around, his arms around her middle, her hands on his shoulders, the night is cool but he doesn't feel its chill.

The world can end now. The world can end and he will die a happy man, whatever happens.

_[if I never told you I love you]_

She takes the tech from him and places the bullet in his hand and suddenly he can see Etta in her.

So clearly, so close – how could he have missed it before? –_And I know our hearts are broken and that it hurts but it's what makes us human. _Her hands are small, she can't even wrap them around his. And it hurts – it hurts it hurts damn it hurts – and he can just fall into her arms and cry._ –I've lost you before over this and I'm not going to let that happen again._ How Olivia always knows what to say and where to find him is beyond him but that's why he loves her, in the end.

_Etta. Etta. Ettaettaettaettaettaolivia. Olivia. Olivia._

Because she is alive, and Etta is not. (_And God, the admission hurts more than the self-inflicted wound in his neck.)_ Because she is alive. Because Olivia is _alive. _–_She's alive inside us. _So he listens to her. (_I'm not going to lose you again.)_

He cannot count how many times he's already lost her. A hoax, a mental invader, a world, a bullet, a lost child, a broken heart. He's lost her again and again and she always came back, as if she, somehow and unconsciously, understood that there was no Peter without her. He was no one without Olivia. Worlds could die and people could disappear, they could take away everything they had (_except for Etta, not Etta not Etta not her)_, they could make them sick and old and helpless, jeopardize his health, his world, even his home. But they couldn't take her away. Whatever Gods ruled the universe(s), thinking treating him like that was fun – one of them must have had mercy on Peter Bishop's soul. (_Broken and shattered but he's alive and Olivia is alive, too.)_ It's probably not right to base his own life on someone else but that is how he feels.

–_Can you feel it? _

_–Feel what? _

_–It's close. _

_–What is close, Peter? _

_–The end, my love. _

_[at least you know I tried]_

* * *

_A/N: Episode List _

_S01Ep01 Pilot / S01Ep13 The Transformation / S02Ep23 Over There, Part 2 / S03Ep08 Entrada / S03Ep15 Subject 13 / S03Ep21 The Last Sam Weiss / S04Ep15 A Short Story About Love / S05Ep08 The Human Kind_


	13. this is where the world ends

_Chapter 13 – Episode 12/13_

**this is where the world ends**

_Summary: Chances, choices, loves. Olivia, Peter. Because this is where the world ends. Complete._

_Warning: Last chapter. Will not only feature Olivia and Peter but everyone I can think of as well. Those who have been following know what to expect. Those who are new, I'd like to refer to the first chapter's A/N for questions, but if there are some regarding this specific chapter I'd be happy to answer them. _

_Set: post-ep to Episode 12/13 of Season 5. _

_Disclaimer: No copyright in__**Fringe**__ment intended. One explanation is taken from an online dictionary. One quotation is by Bette Midler._

_A/N: I'm still fighting with the concept here – if Walter and Michael travelled into the future and thus completed the plan, then the Observers wouldn't send observers to our time. Peter in Olivia's world would die of his illness, and the other Peter would die in the car accident. They'd never meet. They'd never have Etta. So… So. So I made this chapter trying to make so it could be read in two ways: either you just hang on to the end of the series and this adds a little finishing touch regarding other characters, or you do some guesswork here. As I did. Hmmm^^ Thank you for every returning guest, every review and every alert. Thank you for encouragement and patience. Maybe we'll meet again. _

* * *

_tick._

"Don't you think it was a bit of a long shot?" Etta asked.

"What do you mean?" Peter glanced at his daughter from across the counter. She sat on the high stool, her elbows placed on the marble surface, her chin on her hands. Her blonde hair fell onto her shoulders in a golden wave. She looked so much like her mother it made his heart ache.

"Sending Walter and Michael into the future." She never used the term _child observer._ Olivia didn't, either. Of all of them, the two seemed the only ones who thought of it as a living, breathing human being. "I mean, if the Observers found he was a solution to their problemsand never saw it necessary to return to the past, nobody would have saved you from drowning the day Walter's car crashed into the lake. And you wouldn't have survived, and Walter wouldn't have taken you here. There never would have been Fringe events, you wouldn't have met Mum and the two of you would never have fallen in love. I wouldn't be here today. Nothing of it would have happened."

"Well…" He extended the word in order to gather his thoughts. "I've thought about that, too."

"What do you think?" Her grey gaze pierced him interrogatorily.

"It's been years, Etta. To be honest, I still don't know what to think about it at all." His eyes went to the silver chain that hung around her neck, the faded gold of the bullet that had once taken Olivia's life alive against her pale skin. As if she felt his gaze her hand came up, unconsciously tangling itself into the chain. Leaning back, Peter put down the newspaper. "I'm still not sure it was a good idea to tell you everything, but Olivia wanted to. Why are you going there?"

His question held no judgment. Etta smiled and shrugged.

"I keep wondering, that's all. It seems like everything was over so fast. And then it's back to normal, just like that."

"Is this one of the talks I as your father have to tell you that the world is far more than a human mind can comprehend?" He asked, only half joking.

"This is one of the talks I as your daughter ask you whether you believe in fate."

"You mean like a red string that guides people through life?"

"No, I mean something greater than what man can comprehend. Something to set everything right. "

"Isn't that been what I've been saying?"

"I don't mean it that simple, Dad."

Peter sighed, scratched his head. Looked back at his daughter. "My little philosopher. Why do you think something like that exists?"

"Because we're here today."

Peter smiled.

_tick._

They gave him _his_ apartment.

Perhaps they thought he'd be more comfortable there – they had shared the same name, after all – but the only thing he felt was a terrible awkwardness as he stared over the furniture and personal belongings.

_What was he supposed to do here?_

He'd decided to stay on a whim, he'd never made such a choice before. He'd never had the chance before, either. Moving towns was nothing compared to moving _worlds. _Outside the window, airships traversed the sky: quicksilvery and sedate like whales in the ocean. Where there any left here, he wondered idly, then yanked his thoughts back to his current situation. There wasn't much he'd brought, and there wasn't much he could do now once he stopped worrying about what Olivia would say when she found out he was staying in _her_ Lincoln's old place. Charlie had dropped him off and told him agents would come to clear out Linc's personal belonging. Lincoln didn't really want to touch anything but he couldn't sit around and do nothing, either.

He regretted his decision forty minutes later.

Had Olivia known about all the photographs Linc had of her? Different shots, different locations, most of them showing her in her uniform but a few from other occasions, as well. Smiling, laughing, serious. One showed her at a shore, looking out onto the waves. Her expression was so much like the Olivia Lincoln knew that he kept staring at it for hours, or so it felt. When the door buzzed, he guiltily shoved the pictures under his own stuff and went to open it.

She still looked awful. Or perhaps she did so because of the place they were meeting in. Awkwardly, Lincoln stood there until Olivia had pulled herself together again and threw him a weak smile.

"You getting along?"

"I will," he said quietly.

_You will, too. _

_tick._

"What's the matter, Peter?"

She was so attuned to his every emotion that she knew exactly when something was wrong. Except that nothing was wrong. Rather the opposite.

"He's gone," he told her quietly.

"Who?"

"Walter."

"But…" Whatever she was planning on saying, she swallowed it as she saw his expression. A smile dawned on her face, beautiful and warm.

"What did he send you?"

Peter held up the crude drawing on cheap paper.

"A tulip," Olivia said in wonder. "What does it mean?"

Peter thought of a small hill on a cold night, of a small girl and a small boy and a small world, and of a field of white tulips in full bloom despite the time of the day.

"Forgiveness. It means forgiveness."

She didn't ask what there was he should possibly forgive his father for.

_tick._

Maybe it would have been like this:

"Welcome to the FBI," the dark-haired guy greeted him drily. "It probably won't be half as much fun working with us as you now think it will be, but we're glad to have you on board. Charlie Francis – call me Charlie."

He extended a hand and Peter shook it.

"Peter. Thanks. I'm really looking forward to this."

"Not many who still had this feeling when they left again."

Peter thought he rather liked the man. For someone who had worked for a governmental institution for a pretty long time, he didn't seem stuck-up or arrogant. If all the law-enforcement people he had gotten to know in the course of his life had been like this, well, then, he probably wouldn't have landed on their wrong side. He was trying to set things right, but it wasn't as easy as it sounded.

"So, you up meeting the rest of our team?" Charlie said over his shoulder as he turned right at an intersection that led deeper into the building. Peter got the feeling they were straying from known land. He was being led into an adventure by a white rabbit – he chuckled as he tried to picture Charlie in a red waist-coat. The agent frowned at him from over his shoulder. When Peter shook his head, he shrugged and continued on. Soon Peter found himself in front of a steel door, reinforced by several alarm systems, cameras and key panels. Charlie typed in a few digits – Peter made a conscious effort neither to memorize the code nor to think about how easy it would be to bypass it – and the door opened. A huge laboratory opened up in front of him.

"Welcome to the pits of hell," Charlie introduced him. "Come in and meet Dr. Bell."

As they moved farther into the labyrinthine structure that seemed to be the lab, different things leapt out at him. A computer station featuring the newest hardware and probably software, too, and directly next to it an ancient diascope. On the other side of something that looked vaguely like a gas chromatograph, a white-haired scientist was arguing with a dark-skinned woman that seemed to be his personal assistant.

"William, do you need…" A blonde woman stepped into view, saw him and stopped short. There was something on her face – surprise, recognition, wonder, all at once – that fascinated him.

Charlie headed the introduction. "Liv, this is Peter Bishop, the IT specialist that got assigned to us. Peter Bishop – Olivia Dunham."

From across the room she stared at him, her grey eyes wide and piercing, evaluating. The world came to a screeching halt. He _knew_ those eyes. A slight narrowing of hers told him she had noticed something as well. Was there a hint of gladness in her eyes? He wasn't sure. Breaking the moment, he lifted his right hand.

"Hi."

For a second she looked as if she couldn't decide whether she wanted to tell him to leave – or to hug him. Then Charlie threw her a look that told her quite clearly _What's wrong with you_, and she nodded to him curtly.

"Welcome."

It was that something in her eyes that made him fall in love with her.

_tick._

Etta jumps into his arms and Peter has the feeling she has finally, finally, _finally_ arrived. As if she should have been right there long ago. He cradles her in his arms, whirls her around, kisses her forehead and her cheeks and breathes in her smile, her scent, her form.

Behind him, Olivia smiles and vanishes.

_tick._

"Penance. I don't know this word."

"What does the dictionary say?"

Walter waited patiently. He had all the time of the world, after all.

"Penance," the boy cited. "An act of self-mortification or devotion performed voluntarily to show sorrow for a sin or other wrongdoing."

"So?"

Dark eyes looked at him. "What did you do wrong?"

"A lot of things. I did many things no man should ever dream of doing, much less do."

"It is the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance."

Walter laughed quietly. "You learned so much already. Of course, you're right. Still there are things that should be left in peace. It's not for men to meddle with fate. We can only lose."

"What did you do wrong?" He was not easily swayed from a topic once he had latched onto it.

Walter relented. "I saved a child. I stole it. I raised it. It wasn't mine. I am now paying for my mistakes."

"A child?"

"You met him. Peter. My son."

The boy mulled over the information. "You are his father?"

"Yes."

"Like Donald."

It was the first time ever had breached the topic. It had been years ago that they had escaped and still Walter felt nervous talking about the past. Oh, past in so many senses of the word.

"Yes. He was your father in the same sense that I was Peter's."

The boy was silent again, his face impassive as ever. From looking at him it was still the boy he had accompanied to the future. Still, much had happened. The fact that he was able to talk now was so amazing it sometimes took Walter's breath away – literally. Silence fell over the rooms. It was that way often: neither Walter nor the boy needed talk in order to feel more comfortable. The more surprised Walter was when the boy walked over, came to stand next to him. His small hand covered Walter's bigger one for a second.

"Peter forgave you long ago."

Walter smiled.

"I know."

_tick._

"Sssshhhhh," Astrid interrupted them.

Peter and Olivia both glanced up simultaneously but the agent's gaze was directed in another direction.

"Do you hear this?"

Olivia cocked her head to the side, strained her ears. "What do you mean?"

Astrid lifted a hand, her gaze absent.

"It's there. I can hear it. How _strange._"

"Astrid? Are you alright?"

Peter looked at her, concern in his eyes. Astrid looked back at them and smiled.

"Everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be."

In her cart, Etta sighed in her sleep.

_tick. _

The worst fight they ever had.

It was rather spectacular, their first real, bad fall-out. Charlie sensed it early and left for the day. Astrid disappeared into the archives.

In the midst of fury and fire, he threw it at her: "Did you even _know_ how much he loved you?"

And, so different to her usual fieriness, she answered ice-cold: "As much as you love her, I suppose."

How do you tell someone you love him for the sake of someone else?

_tick._

Astrid let herself in.

"Dad?" She called out into the small apartment, hanging her coat onto the rack and dropping her bag in the corner. The worn-out furniture and the soft scents of books, wood and wine hung in the air, familiar and welcoming. She suddenly felt tears spring to her eyes and wonders why.

"Astrid." Her father rounded the corner to the living-room and enfolded her in the most comfortable embrace she ever felt. It was like coming home from a long, long journey and finding everything just the way she left it, and still changed, never the less. For a few seconds, she simply clung to him.

"It's good to see you." His voice resonated in her ears, in her chest.

"You too."

They separated again and her father smiled at her, the same warm smile she knew so well.

"How are you, my girl?"

"It's been crazy, Dad," she started and then wondered what exactly she had been wanting to say. She settled for the simple truth. "I'm glad I'm back."

"You look exhausted," he said, worry sparking in his eyes. "Did you have dinner already? Come on in, I'll make you a cheese sandwich. Oh, and guess what."

"What?" She followed him into the living-room and stopped abruptly. Her father's mischievous grin suddenly made sense. "Oh."

"Derek came to visit me."

There he was: dark-haired, blue-eyed, tall and as surprised as she was at their unexpected encounter. He caught himself faster than she did.

"Astrid."

He couldn't help himself: his face lit up at her view. Astrid looked at him: he still seemed the same. The same boy she grew up with, went to school with, played with on the playground. The same boy she never forgot, the same boy she fell in love with but never was able to tell him. He knew, of course, they had known each other for longer than both of them could remember. There was little he did not know about her.

"I'll be in the kitchen," her father interjected, rather amused. Astrid and Derek stayed where they were.

"So you're back?" Derek finally asked. "Why didn't you tell me? I'd have picked you up."

"It went so fast," she answered, and she really was sorry. For some reason she couldn't say for sure why she was back again, why her last mission had ended so quickly. She'd been called in to assist a scientist, and then… Her memories seemed muddy from there on but everything lost substance in the face of one thought. _It's over._ She supposed it was from the long flight, and from two days without sleep, from the horrible things she witnessed... What were they again? She creased her forehead. But actually, none of it mattered right now. She just saw Derek.

He smiled back.

Astrid crossed the room in a few strides. He welcomed her with a warm hug, envelopped her entirely. She sighed and leaned against him, and then she tilted her head up and kissed him and was flooded with him. She didn't think she ever would want to stop.

It was always the same.

"I think," she said breathless as they parted again, "Now would be a good idea."

"For what?" There was an adorable crease on his forehead. Astrid laughed and kissed him again, and his arms tightened as he caught on on what she was implying.

"Are you sure?"

"Derek," she told him. "I've never been surer in my life."

"Fair enough," he breathed. "Because I've been waiting for far too long."

"Daddy," she told her father as they entered the kitchen, arm in arm, grinning like idiots. "We're going to marry."

"Took your sweet time, didn't you?" He growled and hugged them both so tightly Astrid laughingly protested.

The sandwiches they shared later were the best ones she ever had before, and Derek didn't let go of her hand for the rest of the evening.

_tick._

Loving her is a lesson.

He doesn't think he ever learned that much in his life. He learns that she likes to stay at home in the evening, that sitting in her bed reading (watching TV) is the best pastime she can imagine. He learns that she is an early riser, even during (except for) weekends, that her favorite color is blue (red) and that she wakes up from nightmares of losing her partner again and again. He learns that she can hit any target at however far the range is, than she was recruited for the Agency right after school and that she had wanted to be a doctor (airship pilot) when she was a girl. He learns that she prefers Italian (Thai) food when they order take-out and that she likes sitting on the floor when listening to music. He learns that the first speed-dial on her phonecomis reserved for his number. He learns that she sometimes gets lost in the vastness of the ocean (sky), that she is allergic to grass (nuts), that she doesn't like western and classics (dramas and documentations) and that she misses her mother (Rachel) terribly. He learns she wants to name her first daughter (son) Henrietta (Henry) and that she sometimes is afraid of not being able to be a good mother because _I'm terribly messed-up, am I not? _He learns it never is a good idea to make fun of things she loves. Perhaps, he thinks, she lost too much to be tolerant in that regard.

He learns. He watches her smile and laugh and live, and he thinks that she is a marvel, absolutely amazing. Simply beautiful. He listens to her breath and her voice and her heart beat. And he grows. Some day, he is pretty sure, he will grow to be the man she deserves.

_tick._

Olivia is in a park.

It is dark, it is night, but the darkness is velvety-soft and familiar, and she isn't afraid. The park looks like one she might take Etta to play on sunny afternoons _(Etta? Who's that?)_, a park she has passed by with Peter many, many times already. _(Peter?)_ Confusion makes her turn around: there is nobody here, nobody except herself. "This is odd," she tells herself, her voice small and silent in between the trees.

The scenery changes, forest turns into ocean. Grass becomes sand. She likes it, even if the previous scenery was pretty, as well.

She's still alone. Shrugging, she sits down in the sand, lets it fall through her hands. It is still warm from the sun. Olivia lays back and watches the sky, the breath of the ocean in her heart. It is calming and warm. Stars sparkle in the sky like a million little lights. _Beautiful, _she thinks. She could stay here. Just lie in the warm sand, listen to the sea, see the sky. It's peaceful.

_Child, child, _the waves whisper. _Where are you going to? _Olivia opens her eyes and thinks about the question. Does she have to go somewhere? _(Towards Peter.)_ Who is Peter? _Child, _the sky whispers. _Our choices make us who we are. Through time and universes, you have been calling out, reaching out. Where will you go next?_

Does she have to leave?

_Is this what you want?_

What does she want?

The answer presents itself in clear colors, beautiful and blinding. The tear that escapes her eye rolls down her cheek, sinks into the warm sand. There is only one thing she ever wanted. It was hard, and painful, and it took them so much time to get it right. They lost so much. It hurt and it tore at her but it was what it was like. _Peter. _Not an easy love, not a simple life, but it was her love and her life. Her choices to make, her heart to give.

_Well, will you go back then?_

Without any shadow of doubt she will.

_It won't be the same. _

I fought terrors, and war, and even myself. I am not afraid anymore.

_You will have to wait. And hope. And maybe it won't be the same, but it also might be close to perfection._

I think I've become rather patient.

The sea chuckled, a sound like crashing waves and screaming sea-gulls.

_Patience, Olivia Dunham, is not what anyone who knows you would credit you with._

Never mind.

She gets up again. The sand feels soft between her feet as she starts wandering down the beach. Endless whiteness, endless skies. She stops, and then looks out at the sea again. Suddenly she knows what she has to do. Without hesitation, she steps into the waves, the water cool and caressing her naked feet. She moves further, feels the water at her waist, then at her neck. She closes her eyes and starts to float. Warm arms embrace her, and she returns.

_Goodbye, Olivia, _the sea and the sky and the stars whisper. _And hello._

She wakes up in her apartment, in her bed, and she knows this will be it.

_tick._

_tick._

_tick._

_dong._

The heavy grandfather's clock marks the hour, deep and resonating. Pages rustle. A new story begins.

* * *

_Goodbye. _


End file.
